28 October 2019
In mid-October, a group of nineteen Armenian young professionals of Europe taking part in the AGBU Goriz Leadership Programme gathered in Yerevan for the second and last phase of the 2019 cohort.
Relaunched in April 2019 as AGBU Europe’s flagship programme, Goriz is a yearly programme carried out over a 6-month period, that aims to facilitate the leadership development journey of talent holders. According to its Programme Manager, Haik Khanamiryan, the programme’s goal is “to train young potential Armenian leaders in identifying and developing their assets as tools to implement new projects and to learn to do so in today’s constantly changing world”. The programme’s focus on Armenia, through the choice of the guest speakers and the location of some of the seminars, is also a way to help participants connect with their homeland and engage by using their resources to contribute to the development of the country.
3-Day Seminar in Yerevan
The participants in Yerevan took part in a 3-day seminar, hosted by AGBU Armenia, with guest lecturers Samvel Grigoryan, Managing Partner of BSC Business Support Center, the first consulting, training, research and entrepreneurship development company in Armenia, Martin Galstyan, Adjunct Lecturer of Management and Head of Statistics at the Central Bank of Armenia, and special guest Emma Arakelyan, Adjunct Professor at New York University, CEO & Co-Founder of Orion Worldwide Innovation LLC.
Each day of the seminar focused on a different theme, from Connecting to Engaging and Energizing. After each lecture, the participants engage in various exercises based on real-life situations. In these exercises, participants were asked to reflect on elements of their personal lives in order to help them identity their motivation and their own resources as well as their limits and help them push their boundaries. They discussed how to build a strategic network through trust and meaningful relationships, how to face their fears and take risks, how to identify their sources of energy and set up a sustaining practice to renew it.
Participant of the 2019 cohort, Tatoul Adjamyan, explains what the programme brought to him: “Goriz was a wonderful way to learn about the current leadership models and how to apply them concretely, but it was also an opportunity to reflect in a collective manner on each of our professional goals and to learn to identify our strengths.”
Meeting with the RA President
The seminar in Yerevan ended with an exclusive meeting with the President of Armenia at his office. During this session, President Armen Sarkissian shared his view on the country’s future, gave advice and responded to the questions of the Goriz participants on the prospects for development in Armenia, existing challenges, the role of the diaspora and opportunities for development in the IT sector.
Joining Goriz Alumni Network
At the end of the seminar in Yerevan, participants of the Goriz 2019 cohort were all invited to join the alumni network of the programme. Creating a strong network of Goriz alumni is a crucial aspect of the programme. It pursues the programme’s ultimate goals to strengthen the connections between Armenia and the Armenian youth of diaspora, to connect future Armenian leaders with those of today and to multiply the Armenian professional pool in a variety of fields.
Goriz Alumni Tatevik Revazian, who is today the Chair of the Civil Aviation Committee of Armenia, recalls her first encounter with AGBU Europe’s programme and how the organization, from the very start, showed a keen interest in investing in the Armenian youth. Acknowledging what she learned from Goriz and how the programme fostered her career development, she explains: “thanks to Goriz, I became exposed to people from different countries, evolving in different cultures, but still facing the same issues. This allowed me to view these from a different perspective”.
AGBU Goriz Leadership Programme will soon open calls for the new cohort that should start in March 2020. Stay connected to learn more in the coming weeks! All information will be published at the following link: http://agbueurope.org/programs/goriz/
