Volunteer to Professional: Nick Bazarian

Introduction

This post is about my experience bringing 22 top tier MBA students from around the world, as well as a pro-bono consulting team, to Armenia to create global exposure and build business relationships beyond the Diaspora.  The results of this trip have already surpassed my expectations, and I’m now working to make these new relationships sustainable.

Background

With Birthright recently surpassing 1,000 volunteers, Armenia has benefited from having exposed 1,000 motivated contributors from around the world to its land, people, hospitality, and developmental challenges.  While a fraction of that thousand has fully committed to the country by moving there, most are like me: board a flight home, cry a little, return to a routine, and keep Armenia as a special memory.  Our efforts and impact were brief, but were surely better than not going at all.

I took a lot away from my experience with Birthright in 2006, which was during my junior year in college in the US.  I met lifelong friends, gained some (ok minimal) language skills, and explored as much of the country as I could.  After returning home, I finished college and built up a solid career in IT consulting over the next six years.  While I always desired to return to Armenia in some professional capacity, I could never figure out how to tie it to my career, and refused give up what I had built to start up new there.  Instead, I got married, moved to Vermont to attend the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth, and continued to further my career as an MBA student.  While you learn a lot in business school, one theme that comes up repeatedly is the need to create opportunities for yourself.  With a little luck, I was able to create an incredible opportunity to bring Armenia into the lives of talented and motivated business students.

Towards the end of my first year at Tuck, I completed a group consulting project for a steel manufacturer.  While the experience was positive and educational, it hurt to see a semester’s worth of work end up as a PowerPoint presentation and Excel model for a company that ultimately no longer exists today.  I couldn’t help but think that our team’s effort would go much further in a country like Armenia, where professional services are limited and the impact of an experienced global consulting team would be significant.  Through a conversation with a professor about a wedding I was attending in Yerevan that summer, I found out that Tuck had a professor, Stephen Powell, who was half Armenian and interested in visiting the country on sabbatical later that year. 

Building a Plan

What ensued was an introduction followed by a number of discussions about how we could build a consulting project and potentially a Global Insight Expedition – Tuck’s academic oriented spring break trip – for the next year’s curriculum.  These conversations progressed with enthusiasm, and luck would play its part again when I learned that one of Tuck’s career development directors, Lizzie Napier, was of Georgian descent and had extensive ties to her country.  After more planning and a green light from the school, we got the go-ahead to jointly lead a trip in 2015 to Armenia and to Georgia for a small group of students.  To find a client for a student consulting team, I reached out to Sevan Kabakian, Birthright Armenia’s Country Director, who put me in touch with Sara Anjargolian and Vahe Keushguerian, two dedicated Armenians working to build Impact Hub Yerevan.  After a number of discussions over Skype and separate visits from Stephen and I to Yerevan, a consulting project was planned out for the coming academic year.

While the three of us anticipated that selling Armenia and Georgia as a business-related course would be difficult, we found that student interest in obscure small countries was very high.  Five students from India, Brazil, and China filled out an outstanding consulting team that visited Yerevan in early March, and their final deliverable was top notch, only exceeded by their personal experiences visiting Armenia and experiencing the culture first-hand.  As for the spring break trip, open slots became difficult to get as students signed up and convinced their friends to sign up as well.

The Trip

In early March, we embarked as a group totaling 25 (3 trip leaders, 22 students), starting in Tbilisi.  Representing Australia, China, India, Italy, Nigeria, Spain, and the US, the students quickly came together through rounds of toasts, songs and long meals led by business leaders and cultural extraordinaire. We met with people from government, international development, education, wine, and media.  We traveled through the countryside and the city, noting how the effects Georgia’s Rose Revolution and its war with Russia, as well as its ties to the West, have shaped the existing landscape and people’s attitudes about the future. 

After four days in Georgia, we bid farewell and boarded a bus to Bagratashen, where we walked across a bridge in the rain to Armenia and another bus.  Rain turned to snow as we travelled higher up the Debed River gorge, but this only made our entrance to Armenia far more remarkable.  Over the next four days, we met with members of Armenia’s government, international development community, NGOs (including Birthright), and were given a brilliant lesson in Armenian history by Nareg Seferian.  We toured Tumo, met with PicsArt, completed a joint class session with AUA MBA students, and strolled Yerevan by night with our new friends from the AUA.  Outside of Yerevan, we visited Haghpat, Garni, Geghard, and the Karas winery in Armavir.  Perhaps my personal highlight was witnessing a singing contest in Etchmiadzin’s Gevorgyan Seminary between Armenian Bishop Bagrat Galstanyan and a student who sang an incredible version of the Indian national anthem.  After four days of non-stop meetings, meals, toasts and touring, we boarded the night train back to Tbilisi and partied until the sun came up in the morning.

Reflections

I’m still a bit awestruck that the effects the trip, as well as the consulting project, has had on those involved.  In an official blog post on Tuck’s admissions, one student who had traveled to 40 countries proclaimed that the trip was the best he had ever been on by far.  Other students were so upbeat about the experience that Armenia and Georgia became a common subject around the business school. 

More importantly, the experience had lasting positive effects.  One classmate from Google developed relationships in Armenia that led him to hire Armenian software developers to build an app for his personal business.  Another student who came from the food industry was able to develop a business relationship in Georgia for his family tea business. A third student networked with development bank officials in Yerevan and Tbilisi and was able to land a job in Kiev for the summer. In both Armenia and in Georgia, the students we befriended will have business ties outside of their countries, critical as they become leaders in their respective countries.  As for the consulting team, their work will be critical to the strategic direction of their client in Yerevan.  Most importantly, 27 future business leaders who knew very little about the region are now well acquainted with all that Armenia and Georgia have to offer.

Personally, I also gained insight into the region that will likely factor into my own career aspirations.  I was able to see firsthand the differences and opportunities between both countries in the region, and was able to network with leaders that I never normally would have had access to.  I also better understand the role of international development, education, and technology in the region, and the limitations placed on these avenues by conflicting government policies. 

Next Steps

My goal now is to continue to grow the relationship between Tuck, Armenia, and Georgia.  I’d like to get a trip to the region organized each year, and to grow the consulting relationship into longer term engagements with a wider range of clients.  Armenia is ready for the outside world to enter, it just needs the world to know about it first.  While the Diaspora’s efforts to obtain Genocide Recognition are vital, they won’t have the same positive effect on Armenian society that the international business community could have.  Many of my classmates are going on to work in investment banks, management consulting firms, and tech companies, and their knowledge of Armenia as a resource for intelligent and creative people will be a value creating opportunity that could payoff immensely, as it already has on a small scale.  As for me, I hope that this is just the beginning of my own work there.

Nick Bazarian, from Vermont, was a Birthright Armenia volunteer for 3 months in 2006 and recently graduated with his MBA from the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth.