2012 Pioneers for Change - Vahan Koloian SfCarchive
Channel: SkillsforchangeArchive SfC
Date: 18/04/2013

"Belonging" with Vahan Koloian, and directed by Renuka Jeyapalan.

Vahan Kololian, a Toronto-based financier and entrepreneur,  is Managing Partner TerraNova Partners LP; Co-founder and Chair, The Mosaic Institute. Vahan's business career of over 25 years includes investment banking and turnaround management in both Canada and the U.S. Vahan and his wife Susie are active supporters of community projects centered on health,  developing nations, education and the arts. Vahan co-founded The Mosaic Institute in 2007.  

It was 1915 in Turkey and Vahan Kololian's Armenian grandparents knew they had no choice but to escape. They fled to Egypt, escaping the Armenian genocide. Kololian's grandfather on his mother's side of the family did not make it.  An Armenian community leader, he was executed -- one of an estimated 1.5 million Armenians killed in the genocide between 1914 and 1918.  The Kololian's lived in Egypt for two generations after the First World War. In 1962, the Kololian family left Egypt in search of a new life, choosing Canada even though after arriving in Canada, the United States granted them visas.

A father of two children who were born in Canada, Christopher, 26, and Tanya, 24, Kololian sees his adopted country as a global role model, an ideal place for The Mosaic Institute's headquarters. The Mosaic Institute is a "think and do" tank that collaborates with Canada's ethnocultural communities to promote peace and reduce conflict around the world - starting right here at home. They work to build bridges of understanding and common purpose between Canadians whose countries of ancestry are in conflict. The organization then draws on their shared commitment to fundamental Canadian values like the promotion of peace, the practice of good government, and the protection of minority rights to identify uniquely Canadian strategies for resolving entrenched conflicts overseas.

Both the Mosaic Institute and the Kololians' other projects have the advancement of women's education as a cornerstone for addressing conflict and poverty in the developing world.