Author: Hovik Karapetian

LOS ANGELES— In honor of National Infertility Week Awareness, Alera Enterprises Inc. announced that CBS U.K. has acquired “Egg Factor,” a gripping, 10-part docu-series tracing the extraordinary lives of men and women involved in creating modern families with donated eggs.

“Egg Factor,” which is set to debut in early 2020, was premiered at Raleigh Studios, in Los Angeles, on May 8. The event was organized by Executive Producers, Lara Sarkissian and Alen Tarassians and their female-powered team along with industry experts.

In addition, featured couple Kacy Andrews and Jack Messitt—parents of Fuller House Stars Fox and Dashiell Messitt—joined the panel to discuss their unconventional and highly-controversial journey to parenthood. The screening was followed by a Q&A and wine reception.

In “Egg Factor,” single mothers, couples, lesbians, and gay men who struggle to conceive naturally are finally able to realize their dream of having a baby with healthy eggs from young women who are willing to go through the grueling egg retrieval process. The journeys are both eye-opening and entertaining with twists, setbacks and surprises, but ultimately ending with a same wondrous result: A new life!

“Now, more than ever, women need one another; this is the very notion that motivated us to put our life savings on the line to create an opportunity for women to empower each other in the most extraordinary way. The true experiences featured in “Egg Factor” not only aim to lift the secrecy and shame surrounding infertility, but to help restore the spirits of discouraged, yet determined couples as they surrender to the DNA or a womb of another’s,” said Lara Sarkissian.

“Of course,” Sarkissian adds, “I couldn’t have done this alone. Like the women I followed, I’m indebted to the endless support from Gifted Journeys, PFCLA, my partner Alen Tarassians and our amazing team at Alera who were instrumental in the development and production of ‘Egg Factor.’”

For millions of intended parents, creating a healthy baby comes with a difficult choice they never imagined: accepting the end of their own genetic lineage and relying on a stranger’s eggs. Egg donation is on the rise with 74% more registered donors in the last ten years. 10,000 babies are born each year using donor eggs, a number that has doubled in just a few years.

In “Egg Factor,” the donations are arranged by Gifted Journeys, a leading egg donation and surrogacy agency. While Doctor Vic Sahakian, of the Pacific Fertility Center of Los Angeles, is the guide on the medical side. He is pioneering, straight talking and makes new life happen.

“Egg Factor” is being distributed worldwide by Rive Gauche television.

About Alera:

Alera Enterprises, is a boutique production company founded in 2001 by Lara Sarkissian and Alen Tarassians with a mission to create new media content that is always ahead of the curve. With hundreds of hours of television programs under their belt, the team at Alera is passionate about all that they produce. From script to screen, commercials to documentaries and apps for mobile devices, ingenuity rules! Be it with Overhualin’ (Transforming dream cars with Chip Foose), Living with Ed (Tackling green living with celeb-environmentalist Ed Begley Jr. ) or with their latest series “Egg Factor” (Redefining the modern family formation), Alera creates groundbreaking programming that simply connects to your soul.

Founders Lara and Alen, a husband and wife team, created “Egg Factor” with the same passion and purpose they put behind their production company. Having conquered infertility in order to start a family of their own, they know first-hand how difficult a feat it can seem to be. In the end, however, it’s always worth the battle. Lara and Alen continue with their mission to help discouraged, yet determined parents turn their dream into reality.

About Gifted Journeys:

All donations in “Egg Factor” were arranged by Gifted Journeys, a leading egg donation and surrogacy agency headed by Wendie Wilson-Miller and Tina Barbagallo, both of whom donated eggs of their own multiple times. Wendie Wilson-Miller, Founder and CEO of Gifted Journeys is an award-winning author internationally recognized for her works on LGBT in Insider’s Guide to Egg Donation: A Compassionate and Comprehensive Guide For All Parents-to-Be. Further, Wednie co-founded Society for Ethics in Egg Donation and Surrogacy, where she currently holds the title of Vice President.

About PFCLA:

The medical treatments on “Egg Factor” are led by Dr. Sahakian of Pacific Fertility Center of Los Angeles. Dr. Sahakian has performed over 10,000 IVF procedures and is responsible for the birth of over 7,000 babies all over the world. Hundreds of same sex partners have also been helped by Dr. Sahakian in achieving their dream of building a family through egg donation and surrogacy. He, specializes in treating patients with advanced maternal age and is responsible for the oldest woman on record to have given birth at the age of 67.

His father founded America’s first wine club in a strip mall pharmacy. This is how he’s carrying on his legacy as a true equal-opportunity taster.

BY LESLIE PARISEAU
From Punch 

On a Tuesday afternoon, Paul Kalemkiarian, the president of the Wine of the Month Club, is in his tasting room in Monrovia, California, getting ready for his usual slew of appointments. “I haven’t missed a Tuesday in 30 years,” he says, standing beneath a photo of Pope Francis, inscribed to him and his wife, Sandra. Once a week, beginning at 9:30 a.m., Kalemkiarian tastes through 60 to 75 wines in two shifts, before lunch and after.

The Wine of the Month Club lays claim to being America’s original wine club, and Kalemkiarian chooses every single wine that goes into every single shipment. He will taste literally everything that comes his way, “flavored prosecco to high-end Napa,” he says. For better or worse, he may have the most educated palate in America.

Kalemkiarian’s tasting room, which sits behind a retail store and warehouse, resembles a doctor’s office without the examination table. The countertops are covered in dozens of opened wine bottles—mostly stuff that’s been sent to him, unsolicited. He slides a bottle toward me. The label is a mosaic illustration with a little cartoon man on it. It’s emblazoned Stefon. “Try that,” he says.

Named after Bill Hader’s flamboyant sketch character, it’s an $18 Beaujolais licensed by Lot18 to bear Saturday Night Live’s branding. It is objectively not good. When my face screws up at what tastes like cardboard slathered with grape jelly, he confirms: “It’s awful.” But Kalemkiarian is an equal-opportunity taster and prides himself on the democratic approach; even when he’s certain a wine will be bad, he takes tasting seriously, if only to identify flaws with precision. He dumps my glass, and a tall, well-dressed man walks in bearing a roller bag full of what turns out to be excellent Bordeaux.

These tastings date back to the 1970s when his father, an Armenian pharmacist whose family fled to Egypt during the genocide, unwittingly built the foundations for what would become a ubiquitous subscription model. After completing a masters degree at USC, Paul Kalemkiarian Sr. opened a small chain of pharmacies around Southern California called Prescription Shop. During his final acquisition, he set out to buy a competitor’s drugstore in Palos Verdes’ Malaga Cove Plaza, and ended up owning and operating the attached liquor store. By the early 1970s, he transformed Palos Verdes Wines and Spirits into one of the Los Angeles area’s best fine wine shops.

At the time, modern California wine culture was beginning to percolate, but vintners didn’t yet have the infrastructure to distribute their wares, let alone ship them. Now-iconic winemakers like Dave Stare from Dry Creek Vineyards and Jim Barrett from Chateau Montelena would drive a route from Napa to L.A., stopping at a handful of stores along the way, including The Duke of Bourbon, Wally’s in Beverly Hills and Palos Verdes Wines and Spirits. Back then, Kalemkiarian Sr.’s store stocked grand cru Chablis and chenin blanc from the Loire alongside early releases from Fetzer and Mondavi. A look into his monthly newsletter archives dating back to March 1972 reveals his knack for methodical classification and congenial enthusiasm; recipes and holiday greetings were often tucked into each missive, like an old friend sending an annual family update. It turns out the things that made him a good pharmacist also made him a good wine merchant.

Each month Kalemkiarian Sr. would pick the wines he liked most, and display them on a table for ease of selection. He began to invite other pharmacists, doctors and regular customers to tastings, always held on Tuesdays, so they might contribute to the wine-of-the-month picks. Then a teenager working in his father’s stores, Kalemkiarian Jr. was in charge of brown-bagging the wines for blind tastings. On the day he got his license, he delivered 15 orders to monthly subscribers.

In 1988, after working in software for several years, Kalemkiarian Jr. bought the rights to the club (which had spun off from the store after his father began advertising memberships on the fair circuit) from his father. Today, the original “classic series” club—two handpicked bottles for $24.96 plus shipping—still exists, but he’s added clubs focused on pinot noir, Bordeaux and rosé, all chosen from his Tuesday tastings. All day, he presides over an Excel sheet, assigning each wine a number from one to three. “One means no way I can touch it. Two means I can use it and maybe make a deal on it. Three, is if the price is better, it might taste better,” he pauses, “But it’s only happened once.” It’s the same scale his dad used.

Near the end of the day Kalemkiarian welcomes two women who tag-team their tasting, reciting frontline prices and peering over Kalemkiarian’s shoulder as he types into this Excel file. “Oh, that one got a three!” one of them says. “You’re not supposed to know what that means,” says Kalemkiarian. “Tell me what the deal needs to be,” she says, eager for the sale.

Before they pack up, Kalemkiarian tells a story about a drive his father took up the coast in the ’70s. He stopped by a small vineyard to talk to a guy named Bob Trinchero. “Bob said, ‘It sounds like you know what you’re talking about. I want you to taste something,’’’ he recalls. “He brought out a glass filled with pink wine.”

Kalemkiarian Sr. took Trinchero’s innovation seriously, featuring Sutter Home’s Oeil de Perdrix (aka white zinfandel) in 1975. The present incarnation of Sutter Home would never make the club’s cut, but if a bottle happened to show up at Kalemkiarian’s door, he would most definitely taste it.

ANCA, AYF and Georgetown ASA Already Gearing Up for 2020 Program

WASHINGTON—More than 30 students from top universities and high schools across the U.S. traveled to the nation’s capital to take part in the Armenian National Committee of America’s inaugural Rising Leaders Program – three days of career development and civic engagement designed to inspire public service and community engagement.

The ANCA’s Tereza Yerimyan led the March 10 to 12 initiative, organized in conjunction with the Armenian Youth Federation (AYF) Eastern and Western Regions and the Georgetown University Armenian Students Association (Georgetown ASA), and made possible in large part through a generous contribution by the Ararat Foundation Shahinian Educational Fund.

“Our ANCA Rising Leaders inaugural seminar was a great way for Armenian American youth to explore their own professional career opportunities in Washington while also engaging with civic leaders on the issues we care about collectively as a community,” said ANCA Programs Director Tereza Yerimyan. “We’re thrilled to have hosted this inaugural program and can’t thank the AYF Eastern and Western U.S. and the Georgetown ASA enough for their help in getting this program off the ground.”

“The AYF Western U.S. was proud to team up with the ANCA to organize this one-of-a-kind leadership seminar in the nation’s capital,” said AYF Western U.S. Central Executive Chairman Dickran Khodanian, who also serves as ANCA Western Region Communications Coordinator. “This most recent investment in our community’s youth helps young Armenians realize their full career potential by exploring opportunities in Washington, D.C. We look forward to working together to expand the program, broaden the horizons of our youth, and advance our common cause.”

The program kicked off on Sunday afternoon, with career development workshops focusing on resume preparation, networking, and effective ways to use LinkedIn, led by ANCA Hovig Apo Saghdejian Capital Gateway Program (ANCA CGP) alumni Avak Kahramanian and Tadeh Isakhanian and Program Director Yerimyan. USC Price School of Public Policy Professor Frank Zerunyan rallied the Rising Leaders about the importance of expanded civic engagement both to advance community priorities and for career advancement. At the end of the day, participants sat down with ANCA CGP alumni for one-on-one resume review sessions.

On day two of the program, Rising Leaders met on Georgetown’s campus for panel presentations providing an insider’s view on careers in the U.S. foreign service, international development, and the 2020 Presidential and Congressional campaign trails from former U.S. Ambassador to Armenia John Marshall Evans, American University and Boston University Professor Greg Aftandilian, The HALO Trust’s Amasia Zargarian, and A Demand for Action’s Steve Oshana, with the moderation of ANCA Government Affairs Director Raffi Karakashian. In the afternoon, ANCA National Board Chairman Raffi Hamparian was joined by the ANCA Western Region’s Zanku Armenian and Eastern Region’s Ani Tchaghlasian in offering a 360 degree perspective of the work of the ANCA and its efforts to advance community priorities on the federal, state and local level.

The day concluded with a “khorovadz/kebab” dinner at the ANCA Aramian House where students chatted with ANCA CGP alumni, board members, and local professionals who shared their experiences in starting their careers in Washington, DC.

Nareg Kuyumjian, Georgetown University Armenian Student Association President said, “We were thoroughly inspired by the way the Armenian youth came and worked together over the course of the three days to educate themselves and connect with one another. There are so many opportunities for us in the nation’s capital and we saw that first hand. We’d like to thank the ANCA and the AYF for all the work they did to help make this event possible and we look forward to making Georgetown University the home of ANCA Rising Leaders for years to come.”

“The ANCA’s investment in preparing the next generation of leaders has become a vital step in the work of Hai Tahd,” said AYF Eastern U.S. Central Executive Member Meghri Dervartanian, who also participated in the program. “The AYF Eastern Region was happy to join the ANCA in co-hosting this inspiring and resourceful leadership seminar. Through these types of collaborations and programs, the torch is now being passed on to the next generation. The AYF Eastern Region promises to embody that collective spirit of survival and revolution and remain steadfast in our commitment to the Armenian Cause.”

On the final day of the program, the ANCA Rising Leaders headed to Capitol Hill where they were greeted by the Congressional Armenian Staffers Association (CASA), who generously co-hosted a luncheon for the group. CASA leaders Maria Martirosyan, Arlet Abrahamian, Casey Davison, and Paul Iskajyan were joined by Sam Tatevosyan, Government Affairs Director of the McDonalds Corporation, and Charles Yessaian, Chief Operating Officer of the JMH Group, in sharing insights about how they started their careers in Washington, DC.

In the afternoon, participants met with legislators and staffers from a broad range Congressional offices, including Representatives Donald Beyer Jr. (D-VA), Katherine Clark (D-MA), Ben Cline (R-VA), Pete DeFazio (D-OR), Josh Gottheimer (D-NJ), Chrissy Houlahan (D-PA), John Joyce (R-PA), Ted Lieu (D-CA), Joseph Morelle (D-NY), Bill Pascrell Jr., (D-NJ), Mary Gay Scanlon (D-PA), Adam Schiff (D-CA), Brad Sherman (D-CA), Mikie Sherrill (D-NJ), and Nydia Velazquez (D-NY).

Participants capped off the program with a reception at the Embassy of the Republic of Armenia where His Excellency Ambassador Varuzhan Nersesyan offered words of wisdom, encouragement, and solidarity.

Inspiring remarks were also shared by Berdj Karapetian, the Executive Chairman of the Armenian Museum of America and ANCA Western Region Board member, Irma N. Kassabian, the Chairwoman of the Armenian Relief Society Washington Satenig Chapter (which provided wonderful food and desserts for the evening), and also Dean Shahinian, on behalf of the Ararat Foundation’s Shahinian Educational Fund, which helped make the entire Rising Leaders program possible. Keynote remarks were offered by Charlie Mahtesian, the Senior Politics Editor of POLITICO, who shared his own experiences and encouraged the assembled young participants to explore rewarding careers in journalism.