Artavazd Ghazaryan

Artavazd was born in Yerevan, Armenia. His undergraduate thesis at the Yerevan State University explored “Phase Transitions in Neutron Stars” and he was awarded Diploma with Honors. He continued to pursue his academic interests in the United States earning Master of Science degree in Computer Science from Tufts University and Master of Arts degree in Telecommunications from Ohio University. Later he completed graduate certificate coursework in Economic Systems Design at George Mason University.

Over the course of several years, he started and lead to growth several successful technology ventures and non-profit initiatives. Notably, he founded Imagenomic which is focused on creating high-performance software tools for image processing using their patented innovations. He also founded and has been serving as the co-director of Lusadaran, the first initiative of its kind to research, collect, preserve and promote the Armenian photography.

Having a desire to develop organizations that have broad, long-term societal impact, in 2017 he decided to get world-class leadership knowledge by enrolling the Sloan Fellows Program in Innovation and Global Leadership at MIT.

Shiraz Vartanian

As the Vice president of Data and Analytic Products for First American Mortgage Solutions, Shiraz Vartanian oversees a number of Data & Analytic product solutions including the Digital Gateway API platform focused on enabling access to the immense set of enterprise data, analytic and technology products and services across First American enterprise. Shiraz has over 20 years of experience in the technology financial services and online real estate space. He previously held roles in predictive technology and corporate development at Move.com (operator of REALTOR.com), and product development at Interthinx (now part of First American), which provides fraud, risk mitigation services, and decision analytics for financial service markets. He holds a bachelor’s degree in Biochemistry from University of Illinois and an MBA from Pepperdine University.

Vahe Keushguerian

Vahe Keushguerian is the Co-Founder and Chairman of the Board of Impact Hub Yerevan. Born in Homs, Syria, Vahe grew up in Beirut. After living in the Bay Area and Tuscany, he moved to Armenia in 2009, recognizing the opportunity for growth. Vahe has been largely involved in revolutionizing the wine industry within the country in both quality and culture. He is Founder & CEO of WineWorks, a custom-crush incubator that produces wine for 14 leading Armenian wine brands. In 2015, he Co-Founded EVN Wine Academy, to actualize education in the wine sector. And he is Co-Founder and Chairman of the Board of EVN Report.

Emma Arakelyan

Emma arrived in New York City in August 1989. Her desire and passion were to study and build her career in technology industry while being an economist. She remembers friends telling her how she couldn’t get into a university or get hired at large or Fortune 500 companies.Emma shared that only a few people said: “Try it. You can.” Then one friend encouraged Emma to apply to New York University, where she had studied. That gave Emma the guidance that she needed. Within a week of arriving in New York City, Emma applied and got accepted into NYU. Emma was happy! She was pursuing her passion and plan.

And, as a business-solutions executive, Emma’s mission was to lead teams into making companies more efficient with technology. She identified problems and found solutions that established faster and more efficient workflows, and better products and services. The goal was to increase a company’s productivity and revenue with technology.

Audrey Selian serves as Director of the Artha Initiative associated with Rianta Capital Zurich, a philanthropic program tied to an investment advisory to a single family office and has been active in the impact investing sector since 2006. She is also an advisor to Halloran Philanthropies, and sits on the advisory committees of the Global Impact Hub, as well as on the investment committee and boards of several impact funds and non-profit organizations.

Artha is focused on social investment in rural enterprise in India, with a concentration on the agriculture, livelihoods and small-scale renewable energy sectors. Audrey founded the Artha Platform, an online impact investment community designed to tackle the economics of due diligence around high impact, small scale SME opportunities in India. This platform has recently been spun into a separate entity called Artha Networks Inc (ANI), designed to license the core technology to support similar networks beyond India. She has a particular interest in small sustainable businesses in emerging markets, and has focused on building a portfolio and helping find ways to galvanize like-minded ‘impact’ investors working in “BoP” markets.

Audrey has work experience with the ITU at the United Nations, sub-contracting to USAID, and prior to that in management consulting with PricewaterhouseCoopers; her entrepreneurial experience includes several years spent in business development, marketing and sales at an NSF-funded software technology start-up. She holds a PhD in Technology Policy & Development Studies from The Fletcher School, as well as degrees and fellowships from The London School of Economics, Wellesley College, and Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government.