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Accountability

Our Board of Directors

The Armenia Education Initiative (AEI) is governed by an independent Board of Directors in Armenia as well as the United States that holds sole and exclusive authority over the organization's governance, finances, assets, and operations. Our directors bring expertise across technology, finance, philanthropy, education, and law, and they serve without compensation, as a commitment to the mission rather than a position within it.

United States

Larisa Hovannisian

Founder, Chairman, & Chief Executive Officer

Larisa Hovannisian repatriated to Armenia in 2013 and founded Teach For Armenia after two years teaching special education in Arizona through Teach For America. As Founder and Chief Executive, she sets the movement's vision and mobilizes the resources and government partnerships to realize it. The organization now reaches 20,000 students a year across roughly a fifth of Armenia's regional schools, and she led its evolution into AEI, a single strategy for systemic reform spanning the National Leadership Program, Seroond, the Spark Innovation Incubator, the Public Policy Lab, and a Master's in Teacher Leadership. She is also Co-Founder and Board Chair of Health For Armenia, serves on the board of Kizazi, and hosts the Foundations podcast. The Armenian government recognized her contribution to national development in 2016, and she was named Repat of the Year in 2018. She holds a B.A. from St. Norbert College and an M.A. in special education from Arizona State University.

Rachel Lebaredian

Director

Rachel Lebaredian co-founded the Rev & Rachel Foundation in 2023. The foundation invests in education, culture and the arts, and technology in Armenia and New Orleans, supporting institutions including TUMO, the American University of Armenia, COAF, Yerevan State University, YerevaNN, the Armenian Innovation Foundation and the Armenian State Symphony Orchestra. Her focus is on expanding educational opportunity, creative and STEM learning, and clear pathways for young people. Earlier in her career she co-founded the software company Steamboat Software in 1998 and worked in business development; she studied film and video production at the University of California, Santa Cruz. She co-founded the Rev & Rachel Foundation alongside her husband, Rev Lebaredian, who serves as a Vice President of Physical AI Simulation at NVIDIA.

Suren Seropian

Director; Secretary of the Corporation

As Secretary, Suren maintains the corporate records, minutes of the Board and its committees, and the governing documents of the organization. Suren Seropian has built his career in university advancement, leading fundraising for California State University, Northridge’s College of Engineering and Computer Science since January 2025 after serving as Director of Development for its College of Humanities. He is active in the Association of Fundraising Professionals’ Greater Los Angeles chapter and is a donor to AEI.

Sylva Simonian

Director

Sylva Simonian co-founded TUMO with her husband Sam in 2011 and has shaped the program’s curriculum and its engagement with the environment from the outset. What began as a single center in Yerevan is now an international network spanning roughly a dozen countries, with more than 60,000 alumni and tens of thousands of teenagers attending each week, close to half of them girls. A graduate of AGBU’s schools in Lebanon, she moved to the United States as a teenager and has made education the center of the family’s philanthropy: with Sam she funded the launch of the Computer Science program at the American University of Armenia in 2002 and sponsors AUA’s annual Faculty Teaching Excellence Award. The Simonians jointly received the Armenian Educational Foundation’s Lifetime Achievement Award.

Andy Torosyan

Director

Andy Torosyan co-founded the mergers-and-acquisitions practice at HCVT, where he advises private equity sponsors and closely held businesses on transaction structuring, diligence and tax compliance across manufacturing, retail, real estate, technology and consumer sectors. With more than two decades of experience, he has served as an expert witness and authored numerous tax articles, and was instrumental in establishing HCVT’s office in Armenia. The Los Angeles Business Journal has recognized him among the region’s Most Influential Private Equity Investors & Advisors and in its “40 in their 40s” class. A committed patron of the arts, he chairs the board of the Lark Musical Society. He is a California CPA with a Master of Taxation from the University of Denver and a B.A. in accounting, with honors, from Pepperdine University.

Armenia

Sam Simonian

Chairman

Born in Beirut and educated at AGBU's Hovagimian-Manougian School in Lebanon, Sam Simonian trained as an electrical engineer and co-founded INET Technologies in Texas in 1989, building it into a leading network-management and business-operations firm. In 2011 he and his wife Sylva founded the TUMO Center for Creative Technologies in Yerevan, an afterschool model that puts teenagers in charge of their own learning in technology and design; it now operates across Armenia, Europe and the United States. He funds the work through the Simonian Educational Foundation and chairs the TUMO Foundation board. In October 2024 he was elected the eighth President of the Armenian General Benevolent Union at its 93rd General Assembly, succeeding Berge Setrakian after a 22-year tenure, having served on the AGBU Central Board from 2000 to 2019 and its Council of Trustees since. He is also President of Epygi Technologies. The ANCA Western Region honored him with its Global Educational Excellence Award in 2024, and he and Sylva jointly received the Armenian Educational Foundation's Lifetime Achievement Award. He holds a B.S. in electrical engineering from the University of Texas at Arlington and is based in Dallas.

Veronika Zonabend

Director

Veronika Zonabend co-founded UWC Dilijan, the first academic institution in Eastern Europe and the CIS to join the United World Colleges network, and chaired its Board of Governors from the establishment of the Dilijan International School of Armenia Foundation in 2012 until January 2026, when the board conferred on her the title of Chair Emerita and she continued in her capacity as Co-Founder. With her husband Ruben Vardanyan she founded the RVVZ Family Foundation, the IDeA Charitable Foundation and Scholae Mundi, and in 2020 co-founded Noôdome, an interdisciplinary community of entrepreneurs, scientists and scholars. She sits on the Philanthropy Committee of UWC International and on the boards of the American University of Armenia and Teach For Armenia, whose Board of Directors she chaired for several years. Earlier in her career she built ventures in hospitality and film, among them the co-production of Coco Chanel & Igor Stravinsky, which closed the Cannes Festival in 2009. The President of Armenia awarded her the Order of Friendship in 2014 for her contribution to education and international academic collaboration, and Forbes recognized her in 2026 in its Heroes awards.

Alice Petrossian

Director

Alice Petrossian arrived in the United States at the age of nine without a word of English, entered the Los Angeles public schools, and went on to a 44-year career shaping them. She served the Glendale Unified School District in multiple administrative roles, including a decade as Assistant Superintendent for Educational Services, and retired from Pasadena Unified as Chief Academic Officer and Deputy Superintendent. Four California governors appointed her to state boards and commissions: she chaired the California Commission on Teacher Credentialing, served as President of the California Community Colleges Board of Governors and as a Trustee of the California State University system, and in 2011–12 was elected State President of the 18,000-member Association of California School Administrators. She taught educational administration at California State University as an adjunct professor for two decades. Appointed Co-Chair of the UWC Dilijan Board of Governors in January 2026, she also chairs the ANCA Western Region Education Committee and serves on the governing board of the Armenian International Women's Association. Her advocacy has centered throughout on minority, immigrant and English-learner students. Honors include the Ellis Island Medal of Honor (2012) and ACSA's Marcus Foster Award for Administrator Excellence (2014).

Serob Khachatryan

Director

Serob Khachatryan is a lecturer in the Chair of History, Theory and Logic of Philosophy at Yerevan State University's Faculty of Philosophy and Psychology, and teaches education management and planning at Yerevan State Linguistic University. He served as Executive Director of the Children of Armenia Fund from 2010 to 2013 and continues to advise the organization. His research addresses education governance, human-capital management and the demography of Armenian schooling, including work on the passivity of school management systems and the effects of corruption and weak social capital on reform; his study "Analysis of Demography and Problems of Education in Armenia" appears in the collection Ethnography of Armenia's Independence. He has co-authored school textbooks, including an eighth-grade social science text, and contributed to the Erasmus+ PRINTEL teacher's handbook on innovative and technology-enhanced teaching. He is among the most frequently cited public voices in Armenia on teacher shortages, school consolidation and the financing of higher education.

How We Govern

  • Independent authority. The Board exercises independent judgment and retains sole authority over the organization's governance, finances, and operations. It independently approves every grant, expenditure, and transfer of funds.
  • Staggered terms and term limits. Directors are divided into three classes serving staggered three-year terms, so that one class stands for election each year. No director may serve more than two consecutive terms, ensuring regular renewal of perspective on the Board.
  • Uncompensated service. Directors serve without compensation. They may be reimbursed for reasonable expenses, including travel to Board meetings, under a Board-adopted policy.
  • Written standards of conduct. Every director signs an annual acknowledgment of the Board Operational Guidelines, covering attendance and participation, meeting preparation, confidentiality, conflicts of interest, and fiduciary duty.
  • Financial oversight. A standing Finance, Audit, and Investment Committee (composed of directors, with no officer or employee serving as a voting member) oversees financial statements and the Form 990, internal controls, the independent audit, and the investment and spending of endowment assets. It reports to the full Board quarterly.
  • Managed conflicts. Any director who also serves the AEI Foundation (Armenia) discloses that role annually and recuses themselves from deliberation and voting on matters in which that organization has a financial interest. Such matters are decided by the disinterested directors alone, and the recusal is recorded in the minutes.
  • Advisory councils. The Board may convene advisory councils (including an Education Advisory Council and a Technology Advisory Council) to bring specialized expertise to bear. Advisory bodies advise; they do not act on behalf of the organization.

Board Governance Documents · Annual Reports & Audited Financials · Join Our Advisory Councils