Project Yeraz: Rethinking Armenian excellence
Project Yeraz is more than a career accelerator—it’s a branded experience and a community with a vision.
Backed by the drive of its young founders, Project Yeraz offers a high-touch, personalized approach to unlocking Armenian excellence. It also tackles larger challenges facing young people today amid unprecedented changes in how we work and live.
The initiative is deeply youth-culture relevant—a collective you want to be a part of because it makes you feel good about being a young Armenian. Beyoncé’s robots, humorous and aesthetic content, pistachio hues, a Project Yeraz print newspaper and curated Spotify playlists are just a small taste of what to expect.
Following a successful pilot event in 2023, Project Yeraz launched a longer-term program this year for its inaugural Los Angeles cohort—40% of whom are immigrants and 30% are first-generation college students. Mentors represent entities including TikTok, Warner Bros, NASA, UCLA, Google and more.
The Weekly caught up with the co-founder duo, Melvin Dilanchian and Lena Tavitian, to dive deeper into the social-impact venture seeking to reimagine Armenian excellence.
What inspired you to start Project Yeraz?
The idea was sparked in May 2022 during one of our many conversations about culture, Armenia and social impact—usually around Lena’s kitchen table. Why do many of our youth settle for “good enough” careers? What is a “respectable” career to them and why is it often linear? How does this affect the Armenian community’s influence?
Driven by these questions, we embarked on a summer of user research. By August, we clarified insights that were formalized into a mission: to redefine how—as a community—we create Armenian excellence, and in a way that is youth-centric, innovative and cool.
“Project Yeraz” was initially a placeholder, but the name stuck—capturing our vision of a venue for self-discovery, boundless creative thinking and excellence. Long term, we aim to see this vision translate in Armenians leading decision-making rooms. We believe this robust representation is indispensable to our community’s development.
In what ways has your vision changed since those initial kitchen table discussions?
Our vision began with the Armenian community, but we’re evolving to think bigger about what it means to be a young person today amid unprecedented reshuffling of how we work, live and socialize.
In the early stages, we were primarily concerned with creating a career accelerator—a solution that would empower young Armenians to find their career direction and develop the skills and confidence to excel professionally.
While that is still a major goal, as we’ve progressed, we’ve seen firsthand how many young Armenians were especially drawn to the aspirational emotions of our curated experiences. Young people—Armenian or not—are craving a community that is personalized and fun with tangible value. That’s exactly what we had set out to do from the start: create an experience that has brand equity and that you want to be a part of—not solely because it’s an Armenian program, but because it’s socially and culturally relevant.
That’s exactly what we had set out to do from the start: create an experience that has brand equity and that you want to be a part of—not solely because it’s an Armenian program, but because it’s socially and culturally relevant.
We place a larger focus on these community and cultural aspects. Along with empowering our participants professionally, we’re creating a space that makes being Armenian cool and aspirational. We’ve achieved this through a combination of ways: distinct brand colors and sound, humorous tone, unconventional or cool venues (like a dry cleaner-turned-coffee-shop) and intentional exposure to innovators (like the Armenian entrepreneur behind Beyoncé’s robots!).
What were your main takeaways from the user research with young Armenians in Los Angeles? And which problems did you identify?
Through our surveys and interviews, we found the following:
- 54% of young Armenians find it difficult to outline a professional roadmap to achieve their goals.
- 47% of young Armenians feel that a lack of mentorship and guidance inhibits their professional potential.
- 45% of young Armenians face challenges common to first-generation college students and immigrants, such as financial insecurity, imposter syndrome and a limited conception of what is possible for them.
This data helped us articulate our overarching challenge statement, which is that many young Armenians struggle to envision and achieve their professional potential.
How does Project Yeraz address the unique needs of immigrants and first-generation college students within the Armenian community?
Our user research helped us map out the needs of recent immigrants and first-gen college students. We reconfirmed that many struggle with challenges such as financial insecurity, imposter syndrome and a limited conception of what is possible for them. The last one, in particular, verified our hypothesis and inspired our name—the idea that we should feel empowered to imagine bigger and multi-faceted careers.
We’ve designed our program to address each of these challenges.
Firstly, the program is entirely free, ensuring no financial barrier to participation, and it’s accessible to anyone interested who meets our basic criteria.
Next, we’ve designed workshops to [help participants] practice specific strategies for overcoming imposter syndrome, so they transition from feeling anxious about career discovery to feeling excited and confident. We’ve also asked speakers and mentors to share how they’ve dealt with this hurdle.
To encourage a boundless, creative mindset, our approach has been two-fold: 1) we’ve offered inspiration in the form of fireside chats with accomplished professionals and visits to prestigious or innovative companies, and 2) we empower them with concrete skills and tools for success through one-on-one long-term mentorship and high-impact workshops with trackable, measurable goals.
Any early success stories from your inaugural cohort that you’d like to share?
Like any organization, we track our performance to understand our impact. One understated metric that we especially believe in is not quantitative yet drives our choices: how people feel. Do our participants walk away feeling good, inspired, more confident? And then, we look at how those good feelings transform into actions.
We administered a mid-point survey in April with both our participants and mentors; the results demonstrate existing, measurable impact from our program on all sides.
Participants said that Project Yeraz has significantly boosted their self-confidence, giving them a sense of support, and emboldening them to pursue opportunities they previously did not feel qualified for.
For example, one participant was encouraged to apply to a summer research position by her mentor, which she successfully obtained. Other participants have received job referrals, completed skill-building workshops or gained access to prestigious companies previously inaccessible to them.
Partners, speakers and mentors have consistently underscored the need for such a program and vision. Our speakers and mentors have expressed that being a part of Project Yeraz feels special—a place they want to spend time. To us, this is another value proposition: curating a gathering place that emotionally resonates with our audience and has a deeper purpose of connecting in a meaningful way.
How is Project Yeraz different from other mentorship or career development programs?
Many things! But here are the main ones:
- Youth-culture centric: As young Armenians ourselves, we’ve built a program that’s relatable and exciting for this demographic. We’ve done this both through our brand—which is creative, young and fun—and our programming, which addresses key challenges facing youth today.
- Near-peer mentorship: We match participants with mentors who are leaders in their fields, but not too many steps ahead of them. This ensures that mentors can relate to their mentees and provide relatable and tactical advice.
- Bespoke mentor matching: Unlike other mentorship programs that select mentors first, we first selected our cohort of mentees and spent time learning about what they hoped to gain from Project Yeraz. We then found mentors who could help them navigate their specific challenges and achieve their goals. We prefer a high-touch, personalized offering instead of a one-size-fits-all approach.
- Community-centered career discovery: Through our cohort experience, we’ve transformed career discovery from an isolating, individual experience into a community-centered effort. And we believe in inviting non-Armenians as active participants.
- Focus on an unserviced age range: No existing program within the Armenian community focuses specifically on 20-24-year-olds. The age range is critical in defining the trajectory of your career, and nearly all participants in our research expressed a need for guidance through what they described as an “ambiguous” time in their lives.
- Broadening Armenian excellence: We believe Armenian excellence and leadership takes many shapes, and we seek to prepare young Armenians to compete in a world that is increasingly unpredictable and fast evolving.
How did you recruit mentors from companies like TikTok, NASA and Google?
Most mentors came through our own professional and personal networks. Others we were introduced to, and some, we cold contacted to introduce ourselves! Regardless of the initial level of connection, all mentors were receptive and excited to participate in the program.
Since our launch, we’ve received a consistent inflow of interest from others in being mentors, mentees or contributing in other ways. We’ve even had non-Armenians promote and engage with Project Yeraz!
Mentors meet with their mentees over the course of the program and engage a variety of activities using Project Yeraz resource guides: set goals with their mentees, introduce them to other professionals in their networks, refer them to jobs, review their resumes, complete mock interviews and even design specialized workshops on skills required for their desired roles.
Your Vision Lab event included a tour of the Armenian-founded company behind Beyoncé’s robots. Can you tell us more about this experience?
Vision Lab is one of our signature events—it’s almost a half day of workshops designed for the specific cohort, fireside chats, plenty of time to hang out and a company visit.
This year, we visited VTProDesign—a leading creative technology studio founded by Vartan Tchekmedyian. Both Vartan and VTPro have been early partners to Project Yeraz. After speaking at the Vision Lab, Vartan led a tour of the VTPro campus in Los Angeles. We were able to see VTPro’s various workshops, labs and projects in progress for Netflix, Gatorade and Ray-Ban.
Many of our participants—including those who are not pursuing fields related to the company’s work—cited this as one of their favorite program experiences. They were inspired by Vartan’s own founder’s story of transforming his love for electronics and entertainment into a successful company.
And whether you are part of the BeyHive or not, it’s impressive to know that Vartan’s team designed the robots for Beyonce’s 2023 Renaissance Tour and Cowboy Carter Tour. Before the world saw the robots unveiled at her April 2025 concert, Project Yeraz participants saw them being built at the VTPro office. It was a one-of-a-kind sneak peek and a great example of the exclusive and youth-centric approach we offer.
Your approach has caught the attention of Armenian trendsetters like Alex Salibian (a speaker at your first retreat) and non-Armenians who champion your program as a model. Could you share more?
Speakers and mentors define the participant experience, and they are another way our brand is understood. For us, that means widening the horizon of what an accomplished Armenian is—we look for people who embrace our values of innovation, cultural relevance and aspirational mindset.
And not all our expert partners are Armenian. In fact, we believe first in exposure to professionals at the forefront of their fields, regardless of their cultural backgrounds. We also believe in opening opportunities for non-Armenians to feel a sense of responsibility in improving Armenian representation in the professional world—our early conversations for funding involved non-Armenian organizations.
Alex is someone who took his love for music into an incredible career in a competitive industry, working with incredible talent (we all love Rosa Linn, and we all know Harry Styles!). He then chose to innovate further by helping build a tech-forward company [that is] redefining the record label business model.
Most recently, we held a private session with a premier venture capital firm, hosted by a non-Armenian peer who generously donated her time and expertise. We also hosted a private session with Ashwinn Krishnaswamy on building brands—even our participants pursuing STEM careers had takeaways about how to take their interests and careers a step further. This is the big picture thinking we want to manifest in young people.
How did your partnership with Impact Hub Yerevan, Gyumri and Syunik come about?
Impact Hub Armenia and Project Yeraz share many of the same core values and goals: we are both dedicated to supporting Armenian changemakers through an approach that combines inspiration, connection and enablement. Given this synergy, we felt that Impact Hub would be the ideal partner as we scaled our program.
What advice would you give to those seeking employment or still contemplating their career path?
There are a few pieces of career advice that we’ve heard repeated at Project Yeraz.
The first is to meet as many people as early as you can before making critical decisions that invest your time and resources. These conversations will not only help you understand different industries and jobs, they’ll also clarify your goals and build a network that you can leverage to secure a job.
The second is to be bold—write strategic cold emails and follow up, even when you don’t initially receive a response. Opportunities will arise only if you ask for them. Similarly, when applying for a job, go beyond the minimum—having the skills for a job is the minimum, so how can you bring additional value? Figure that out and find a way to communicate it to the hiring team.
Lastly, it’s understanding that careers today don’t look like they did five or even two years ago. The rapid technological change led by AI is only going to accelerate this trend. As one speaker recently confirmed to Project Yeraz, we no longer think in 20-year increments—that means being flexible in skill and curious in approach.
How can one get involved in your project?
We are still in the inaugural cohort of our program, which will conclude in August. The best way to stay updated on future activities is to follow and connect with us on LinkedIn or Instagram @projectyeraz!
Milena Baghdasaryan
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