I was born and raised in Southern California. My parents, who are from Iran, brought up my sister Taleen and I steeped heavily in the large Armenian community in the San Fernando Valley. We both attended AGBU Manoogian-Demirdjian School in Canoga Park, a school from which I will always carry the fondest of memories. It was a nurturing setting where the full diversity of the Armenian Diaspora from both East and West crystallized within me. After high school, I attended UCLA where I majored in Economics and also minored in Armenian Studies, graduating summa cum laude in 2008.

I am currently in my third year at Penn Law School in Philadelphia, where I most enjoy studying international legal topics. Last summer, I interned with a criminal trial judge at the Court of Common Pleas in Philadelphia. The summer prior I clerked at the largest public interest law firm in the United States, Bet Tzedek Legal Services of Los Angeles County. At Penn, I am involved with the Middle Eastern Law Students’ Association, the Journal of International Law, and the Iraqi Refugee Assistance Project. I am also currently enrolled in intermediate Farsi classes, a non-law related scholastic interlude allowing me to reclaim the diversity that the natural effects of my parents’ immigration to America had eroded.

Throughout my adolescence I’ve been fascinated by studying the Republic of Armenia. An interest sparked by my Armenian heritage (and thanks in no small part to the influence of my lovely, patriotic, and wise grandmother Lili Marcarian), it’s given me a strong belief in the law as a mechanism of civic empowerment and political change. In this framework, I’ve targeted the cultural lack of the rule of law as the foremost issue in the developing world. Wherever a government disempowers citizens through inconsistencies, corruption, and secrecy, violence is the inevitable result. Acknowledging these obstacles, I still ardently wish to be involved in the process of change in my ethnic homeland in some fashion.

As a student I’ve already laid the ideological groundwork for such activism. Whether volunteering with the annual fundraising Telethon in Los Angeles, organizing cultural events on campus, or simply engaging in political discussions with others, I’m deeply committed to protecting my heritage. Moreover, my economics studies had a heavy sociopolitical focus on the post-Soviet region. Through it I’ve conducted econometric research on the developing world. In a three month-long study, I looked at the effects of foreign aid on human development indicators in a laundry list of nations, from Africa to Asia. Surprisingly, I concluded that foreign aid serves to mask weak domestic development in the related sectors. This result made me question the conventional wisdom that throwing money at causes is the solution for developing nations like Armenia.

Hopefully, with that sobering lesson in mind, and with organizations like the Luys Foundation, together Armenia, Artsakh, and the Diaspora can serve to usher in a new, progressive, and reborn Armenia out of the ashes of the 20th century.