AGBU Hye Geen and Young Circle to host “Women Journalists at the Forefront of Empowerment”

NORTHRIDGE, Calif.—On Saturday, November 5, AGBU Hye Geen and its Young Circle, in partnership with the Armenian Studies Program of California State University, Northridge (CSUN), will be hosting an international conference discussion titled “Women Journalists at the Forefront of Empowerment.” The event will take place at the University Student Union’s Grand Salon on 18111 Nordhoff Street. Registration will start at 9 a.m. The conference will begin at 10 a.m. and end at 2 p.m.

The international conference will start with welcoming remarks by the head of the AGBU Hye Geen organizing committee, Nellie Yacoubian. She will highlight the goals of the conference, namely educating the Armenian American diaspora on current social issues facing the global Armenian community.

The day’s moderator will be Liz Ohanesian, a Los Angeles-based freelance journalist covering arts, culture and music.

The conference committee has worked diligently to ensure the participation of highly-qualified women journalists. Among them is Astrig Agopian, a French-Armenian multimedia journalist, currently based in Yerevan as a freelance correspondent. She is also the co-founder of the popular Namag, a weekly newsletter to help English speakers understand Armenian issues of the day.

A recurrent theme in Agopian’s articles is her conviction that being Armenian is a right and a responsibility. Agopian is also concerned about the human toll of war as expressed in her article about prisoners of war and the anxiety of families caught in the turmoil of war.

Lillian Avedian is a journalist and poet based in New York. She is a staff writer for the Armenian Weekly and has published extensively about domestic politics and geopolitics in the south Caucasus. Examining the perspectives of the Artsakh conflict resolution, she has written about the significance of the “red lines” in the normalization process with Turkey and Azerbaijan. She has also written about Armenian contemporary art and reinterpreting memory to inspire a new generation of Armenian art collectors.

Yerevan-born Ellina Abovian is a Los Angeles-based, Emmy nominated television broadcast journalist. She is a lively, knowledgeable presence on KTLA 5 and has covered a variety of current events from wildfires and mass shootings to the groundbreaking of the Armenian American Museum and the impact of global news on the local community. She has also helped raise awareness for the Armenian Genocide.

Lika (Anzhelika) Zakaryan is a freelance journalist based in Artsakh. She has studied at the Peace Work Institute of YMCA-Europe, specializing in conflict management and peace-building methods. She has worked as a social worker at a rehabilitation center, as well as in Artsakh’s Ministry of Culture, Youth and Tourism as a project and social media manager. Zakaryan’s studies and work experience have helped her understand the complex nature of long-simmering ethnic tensions and the need to build bridges of political cooperation. Her writings reflect her appreciation of the Armenian Diaspora’s soft power in balanced diplomacy, in lobbying and negotiating differences to overcome distrust and hostility. Zakaryan is best known for her wartime diaries, 44 Days: Diary from an Invisible War, which she turned into a book in 2021.

Ohanesian will also moderate a question and answer session.

To attend the conference, RSVP by October 31 by calling (818) 731 5456. Donation for adults is $50. There will be free admission for students with an ID.