KristinaKristine Sargsyan, licensee and organizer

Kristine Sargsyan is a professor of Business Communication in American University of Armenia. She is a public speaking coach and an organizational development consultant. She brings together more than 20 years of coaching and consulting experience in NGO and private sectors. Kristine crafted several organizational development (OD) tools and also established a small OD library for local professionals during her career path. Previously Sargsyan worked for TACIS, World Learning, USDA, Unicef, UNDP, CoE, Eurasia Partnership Foundation, Caritas Armenia, Real Medicine Foundation and TED. With a background in foreign languages, Sargsyan obtained MBA from CMU.
She is the founder and licensee of TEDxYerevan conference in Armenia.
More than 30 successful TEDx events have been organized under her supervision. She also developed a personal growth coaching program through impactful speaking – called “Think” and used it to coach high ranked state officials and dozens of Silicon Valley startup leaders. In 2010 Sargsyan became an International Visitor Leadership Program fellow – US Department of State Program.
Kristine is also a TED OTP Project fellow and TED Global Participant.
In 2015 she has been recognized as one of the 28 TED-Ed Innovative Educator of the world who have been selected from 250000 educators, trainers and teachers. Here is a TED blog post about it.
In 2017 she has been recognized as one of the 21 remarkable women who change the Eastern Europe by different European investigative journalists’ networks.
Kristine is also writing a book called “Tracing My Brain” for kids, parents and educators.
Presently she is working on establishing THINK Studio S*cool and is also developing a TV project called “Future is Talking” aiming at rising kids and youth voice in Armenia.

 ArpiArpine Grigoryan

Arpine Grigoryan, known by her internet personality ‘arpik’, is a new media professional, trainer, marketer and tech guru with 14 years of teaching and training experience. Grigoryan currently heads the Yerevan office of News Deeply media startup and is the director of operations of the global company. Previously she was the communications and corporate affairs at PanARMENIAN Network – an Armenian media company and also manages some media related projects. She is also involved in the TED Open Translation and TEDx Activator projects in Armenia. Grigoryan went from leading a web design club for kids to conducting an Internet marketing course at a local university. She has been involved in several youth organizations, including Manana Youth Educational Cultural Center and AIESEC youth non-governmental organizations, where she led projects in information systems, participated in various international youth conferences and served at the AIESEC International headquarters in Rotterdam, Netherlands. Grigoryan received her Master’s degree in Management Information Systems from the State Engineering University of Armenia where she also completed her bachelor studies.

LilitLilit Stepanian

Lilit Stepanian is an artist with 10 years of experience in set, costume, graphic and print design. In 2012 Lilit created her own LU Art Space Studio of print, textile, set and handmade designs.She graduated from the Faculty of Scenography of the Yerevan State Institute of Theater and Cinematography in 2006 with an MA degree in Scenography (Dramatic Decorative Art). Lilit has also completed a post-graduate course on Graphic Design and 3D Animation at the Triada Studio in 2012. Lilit portfolio includes design, illustration and animation projects for the Eiva Arts Foundation (Art Director, current), Yerevan State University, Eurasia Partnership Foundation (EPF), Foundation for the Preservation of Wildlife and Cultural Assets (FPWC), PanArmenian Media LLC, Yerevan Zoo Park, and most of the Armenian theatres. Lilit’s illustrations and graphic designs were published in numerous magazines and books. Lilit also was an art teacher – trainer (curator) of children program at The Cafesjian Center for the Art (also art teacher at Ayb Elementary School). Lilit has participated in a lot of exhibitions in Armenia (Yerevan, Gyumri, Dilijan) and aboard (Prague, Vienna, Paris, Moscow) since 2001. In 2010 Lilit presented her individual exposition of Armenian Masks artworks presenting imaginary masks with ethnic elements. In 2011 she participated in Prague Quadrennial of Performance Design and Space in Prague, Czech Republic and in the same year she participated in White Mask International Mime Festival in Moscow, Russia and was selected the award winner of the Festival. Lilit is a member of the Armenian Union of Artists since 2006.

ArtakArtak Mkrtchyan

Artak has been a great help to the team during the TEDxKids@Yerevan events for the past few years. Artak has a background in economics but he feels the most comfortable working in the area of digital media. He currently works at TUMO Center for Creative Technologies as a digital media coach. He also assists running a project at TUMO, called THINK, which offers a unique chance for kids to learn and hone their presentation skills.

VaheVahe Nersisyan

Vahe Nersisyan is currently studying cinematography at Yerevan State Pedagogical University in Yerevan, Armenia. He is a huge fan of cinema and TED talks. He was one of the speakers at the first TEDxkids@Yerevan event in 2012. Vahe’s portfolio includes directing, cinematography and editing. He has also volunteered shooting documentary films and music videos. Currently, Vahe is working on the short film on TEDxYouth@Sisian event which will take place in November 2014.

Emma Dovlatyan

Emma

Currently Emma is studying at Yerevan State college of Humanities, in the faculty of translation and clerical work. She loves languages: especially German, but can’t speak it fluently yet, as she is learning. After graduating from the college Emma wants to continue her study in the sphere of culture, with the purpose of knowing several nations not only by their names but also by their art, architecture, literature etc.
But her dream profession  is event management, unfortunately there is no such faculty in any of Armenian universities, but Emma says that someday she will  enter the university  she needs, even if it’s abroad and get her education there.
Emma also loves photography, she attended several photography projects at Tumo Center for Creative Technologies concerning Soviet architecture, documentary photography and storytelling,  reserving national heritage etc. Again at Tumo Center she took a class of presentation skills called “Think” hold by Kristine Sargsyan, then became a member of Ted-Ed club and a speaker in TEDxKids@Yerevan 2014: Her  speech was about how people complicate things.

Samvel Khachikyansamvel

Samvel is the youngest member of TEDxYerevan team. He is studying at high school. He was one of the speakers at TEDxkids@Yerevan event in 2015. Samvel is a future programmer because he thinks that new technology will help people to live a better and a longer life. Samvel also likes robotics and he took part in many workshops at Tumo center about robotics. Samvel likes sport too he is very good swimmer and also has some medals from different Judo championships. After graduating from the school Samvel wants to continue his education in one of the most famous universities.

Arsen Budumyan

arsenCurrently Arsen is studying Radiophysics at Yerevan State University. Despite this, he sees himself as a programmer right now. Arsen just started learning embedded C programming for microcontrollers.  Apart from all of this, he really likes reading manga, and sometimes watching anime.
Arsen is always looking  for a chance to learn something new as he is fond of self-education. He a lso participated in TED-Ed club where he has learned really useful skills for his life and career. Arsen likes eating tasty food (sometimes too much) and listening to good music (also too much, sometimes).

Gayane Hakobian

Currently working as a Community Development Manager at Innovative Solution & Technologies Center (ISTC) Gayane has a sound background in Economics from Friedrich-Schiller University in Germany, and hands-on experience in event coordination, recruitment and team management from TEDxFSUJena. While living in Germany, she was involved in organization of TEDx events, first as a coordinator of volunteer’s team, including recruitment, orientation, performance assessment and allocation. She later became the Lead organizer of the annual event, eventually being included in the TEDxFSUJena Advisory Board.