Typically held twice a year at Yale University and Columbia University, the ARS Norian Youth Connect Program brings together university students from around North America for a weekend of lectures, workshops and discussions. The Spring 2021 installment of the program will be held on Zoom, serving as an opportunity for YCP alumni and new participants to connect and engage in discussions virtually.
As TUMO’s founding CEO, Marie Lou Papazian developed the center’s educational program and led the design and construction of its flagship facility. Prior to TUMO, Papazian led the Education for Development Foundation linking Armenian students to their global peers through online educational activities. Previously, she was lead construction manager on prominent high-rise buildings in New York City. Papazian holds a master’s degree in Computing in Education from the Teachers College at Columbia University, as well as degrees in engineering and construction management from Stevens Institute of Technology. In 2019, she received the Ordre des Palmes académiques — a national order bestowed by the French Republic on distinguished academics and figures in the world of culture and education.
Razmik Panossian is director of the Armenian Communities Department at the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, Lisbon, since 2013. He is the author of the critically acclaimed book, The Armenians: From Kings and Priests to Merchants and Commissars, and various other academic publications on Armenian identity, nationalism, politics and diaspora. He was the director of programs at a Canadian governmental agency in Montreal devoted to international human rights promotion and democratic development and has been a consultant for UNDP in NY. Panossian obtained his PhD from the London School of Economics and Political Science in 2000. He has taught courses on nationalism, ethnic conflict, post-Soviet transition and democratization at LSE and at SOAS.

Simon Maghakyan documents Azerbaijan’s erasure of medieval Armenian monuments and researches politics of cultural preservation. He lectures International Relations at the University of Colorado Denver. Maghakyan has worked with the advocacy organizations Amnesty International and the Armenian National Committee of America and was the initiator of the American Association for the Advancement of Science’s pioneer satellite investigation into cultural destruction. His widely-cited 2019 investigative report, “A Regime Conceals Its Erasure of Indigenous Armenian Culture,” co-authored with Sarah Pickman for Hyperallergic, conclusively exposed Azerbaijan’s covert erasure of 28,000 medieval monuments.
‌
‌