Every few years, I invite readers and colleagues to contribute guest columns in the series Technology and my Hobby/Passion. A couple of hundred have contributed since 2009 on their birding, charities, cooking, music, sports and every other passion, and how it keeps evolving with technology. Click here and scroll down to read them all.
This time it is Dr. Patti Fletcher, CMO at Limeade. She has spent her career at the cutting-edge intersection of people, business, and technology. She is driven by one mission: to level the playing field so that all talent can thrive. She is the best-selling author of Disrupters: Success Strategies from Women Who Break the Mold and a renowned expert on gender equity and how to build a culture of inclusion to drive real business results.
She writes about her charitable passion - a scholarship - and much more inspired by her Armenian grandmother.
“Earlier this year, after years of working with and supporting the Armenian International Women’s Association (AIWA) through keynotes, social media campaigns, monetary donations, and strategy and board support, I deepened my collaboration with the organization through their scholarship program.
In June of this year, together with my daughters, we established and launched a scholarship in memory and in honor of my maternal Nana, Arshalous Tashjian Medzorian. The scholarship is awarded to two Armenian women over thirty years of age who are pursuing advanced STEM and/or economic development degrees in order to make a better life for themselves, their families, and the communities where they live and work.
The scholarship is a passion project that I hope lasts beyond my time on earth. It is a deeply personal and has its origins a few generations before my birth. I am the granddaughter of survivors of the Armenian Genocide. Nana was orphaned in the genocide when she was just 6 months old. She has been the catalyst for much of how I live today: from the work I do to the mother I have become. She even shows up on stage with me. Whenever I deliver a keynote about equity in the workplace, I like to open with a story about my Nana and how she inspired me to create a global platform to drive change for gender equity in every aspect of life. Even as a technology executive who has built her career at the intersection of people, business and technology, I have been fueled to level the playing field so that all talent can thrive. Above is a Keynote kick-off at a recent AIWA scholarship fundraiser.
The youngest of 10 children, Arshalous (translated to "Dawn"), whose mother was widowed at the time of her birth, represents her name - one hope, belief, grit, and resilience that is needed to seek the light in the darkness, to believe and create the promise of a new day. Armenians are a strong and proud community of people. They have been and continue to face dark circumstances. And still, we rise.
At just .04% of the world’s population, the plight of Armenians and Armenian women is largely unknown in non-Armenian communities. Yet, the Armenian genocide, which Hitler used to justify the invasion of Poland ("Who, after all, speaks today of the annihilation of the Armenians?”/ “Wer redet heute noch von der Vernichtung der Armenier?”) killed 1.2 million Armenians. The impact was so extensive that there is not one Armenian living today whose family was not impacted. My family was so drastically impacted that elevating narratives of Armenians, particularly Armenian women, to the rest of the world, has become part of the legacy I want to leave behind.
I’m the youngest of three girls with several years between my sisters (Irish twins) and me. Whereas my contemporaries came from traditional families with dads who went to work and moms who stayed home, my mother was a working mom before working moms where a thing in middle-class suburbia. Every weekday morning, while my sisters went to school, she would drop me off at my Nana’s and Grampa’s apartment on her way to the office.
Despite spending much of my childhood with my Nana, I knew very little about her and even less about her family. In an effort to learn more, I went back for my PhD when I was in my thirties, while working full-time at SAP and supporting my family. That allowed me to research like a scholar; my MBA research skills were not helpful as information about the genocide is hard to find. It was through my doctoral journey where I gained the research acumen that I needed to learn who my Nana was, what her life experience was like. and the origins of our family. These insights were supported by the genealogy work that my brother-in-law conducted. Here's Nana, standing far right, at a refugee camp with some of her extended family,
The insights about my Nana and her family, particularly her mother and sisters, came at a time when I was also conducting my dissertation research – a phenomenological study of women who held board of director positions in technology and life sciences businesses. Unlike the women in my dissertation who held a tremendous amount of self-agency and used it to build platforms for real change via the influence of their board and executive operator roles, my Armenian female ancestors had no say in their own lives. My Nana had it the worst of all. After a very scary and traumatic childhood that included being raised in refugee camps, she was able to move to the United States at nineteen years-old because her brothers had arranged for her to marry my grandfather, a man she never met and who was fifteen years her senior. My grandfather and his family had escaped Turkey and immigrated to the United States in the early days of the genocide. Nana and Grampa married very quickly following her arrival. Here's Nana in Marseilles. pictured with her brother Vahe who was stationed nearby in the US Army. a day before embarking alone on the ship that would bring her to Ellis Island.
My grandfather was a cruel and abusive man who had complete control over my Nana. Despite being the kindest, most generously loving person who I have ever known, she lived a life of oppression.
What keeps me inspired to do this work is my Nana’s belief in the power of education. Education gives women options to harness their power and make a difference in their lives. In addition to education, technology is a key vehicle to level the playing field for all populations, Armenia and Armenian women are no different. STEM is a core avenue of economic development in Armenia. In fact, the country has set its sights on becoming the Silicon Mountain where the world’s leading unicorns are born. The entrepreneurial ecosystem is thriving with new funds and start-ups that are solving real problems around supply chain, clean tech, and farming/agriculture.
If the applicants for the scholarship are any indicator, I would say that the country’s focus on technology is working. The applicants for the scholarship were incredibly impressive entrepreneurs, many of whom have undergraduate degrees in STEM and/or have practical experience in leveraging technology to scale businesses that positively impacted their communities through job creation and net-new innovations. It was not easy to choose. The award recipients chosen hail from Ballouneh, Lebanon and Sandbach, England and are pursuing a MBA in Finance from the London Business School and a MBA at Alliance Manchester Business School with a focus on Strategy & Managing Disruptive Technologies, respectively. It is an honor to be part of their journeys.
The Arshalous Tashjian Medzorian scholarship represents the hope, belief, grit, and resilience that is needed by Armenian women to seek light in the darkness, to believe and create the promise of a new day. My ultimate goal is stand-up The Arshalous Project as a 5013.c to raise the next generation of Armenian women leaders who are on missions to close the gender gap in business, academia, and government.
There are many incredible organizations out there who are invested in the future and protection of Armenian women. Here are a few that I support:
https://aiwainternational.org/
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