Young Entrepreneurs and Political Activism in Armenia

Panelists: Mayis Margaryan and Ashot Vardanyan and Armen Kherlopian. Moderator: Al Eisaian
It was held on Saturday, March 25, 2023 @ 11:00 am, PDT

Abstract: Political entrepreneurs are those who create ideas and innovations, and act as new leaders in politics. They are individuals and groups who seek to improve the science and art of politics through disruption, new ways of solving political problems in terms of political philosophy, technology, campaigns, and governance. Just like the rise of social entrepreneurs worldwide brought about better business management and hence more innovation and technological miracles, now we need the same with political entrepreneurs. Armenia has just begun its entrepreneurial revolution by its young and fearless changemakers, now it may be time to enter the phase of political entrepreneurship. Today, politics is a complex and complicated field of taxing and spending constituents, or tackling huge internal and international problems, such as competition, regulation, or poverty, and political entrepreneurship is a means of utilizing power to make decisions to solve societal and political problems, shaping, changing, and consolidating political institutions. These and other issues will be addressed by the panel.
Mayis Margaryan was Born on February 6, 1987, in Yerevan. In 2012, he graduated from the Armenian State Economics University with a master’s degree in Marketing. He worked in several companies, including "Inecobank", and "Ardshinbank" CJSC as risk manager and analyst. In 2015 he founded the Excelist Training Club, which provides online training in data analysis. From 2019 he has been engaged in social entrepreneurship, especially through the organization he founded, Children in the Region which is an NGO involved in building capacity in leadership by creating networks in various regions of Armenia through activities. Since 2021 he has moved to Stepanavan to coordinate these networks.
Ashot Vardanian is a 27-year-old researcher, developer and entrepreneur, born and raised in Russia. He started programming in elementary school and launched numerous successful software products before graduating from high school. He pursued a degree in Astrophysics, combining it with his research in Theoretical Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence, which led to Unum's creation in 2015. Since then, Ashot has travelled across 4 continents until settling in Armenia and calling it home, for himself and his company, Unum.
Dr. Armen R. Kherlopian is an entrepreneur, scientist, and investor. He currently serves on the Scientific Advisory Board of NASA-backed TRISH, is a Founding Partner at the BAJ Accelerator and is a board director at Scylla AI. Armen's diverse work experience spans leadership positions at massive multinational organizations including Booz Allen and Genpact. He has been the recipient of several notable awards, including the U.S. National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship, U.S. Department of Energy Computational Science Graduate Fellowship, Coca-Cola Scholarship, and has served as a U.S. delegate to the Lindau Nobel Laureates Meetings. Armen holds a Bachelor's and Master's degrees in Biomedical Engineering from Columbia University, where he specialized in algorithms. PhD in Biophysics, Cornell University in machine learning and fellowship in High Performance Computing and AI at Princeton University. Armen is a thought leader and brings a unique blend of technical expertise and business acumen in innovation initiatives.
Al Eisaian is CEO and Board Member of Cognaize Holdings Inc., Co-Founder and Board Member of IntelinAir, and Co-Founder and Board Member of IntelinAir. Formerly, Eisaian led several startups with successful exits and worked on a string of startups, Integrien (acquired by VMWare, 2010), IconApps (acquired by Science Inc., 2014). Al is a multiple-exit serial entrepreneur who specializes in people. He has built several innovative, collaborative teams around scientific breakthroughs and has then helped them achieve greatness. Mr. Eisaian is a committed servant leader for over 30 years and believes in the human potential as an infinite resource. Mr. Eisaian earned his BSEE from Oklahoma State University and his MBA from Pepperdine University.