Andre Gumuchdjian is a Belgian-Armenian philanthropist and entrepreneur. A graduate from Harvard University, he has been involved in different projects in Armenia and Artsakh since 2013.
Andre has decided to found My Forest Armenia because he feels future generations should not be burdened to clean up previous generations’ pollution. It is the moral duty of each of us to clean up our carbon emissions. Fortunately, there is a way to do that by planting trees.
As he got more involved in the project, Andre realized the crucial importance of forests for our living planet. Forests are incredibly complex ecosystems and associated with numerous aspects of life on earth. The biodiversity that it creates is essential for the human species to develop.
Mihran has been working in diamond and jewelry business since 1992. He is living in San Francisco with his wife and two young children.
Mihran has always loved nature and trees in particular. The whole family goes on hike every two weeks in Northern California and especially love to go into the Redwood forest where the serenity and the feeling of peace in the forest is amazing. Trees and forest in particular are very important not only to climate change but also provide a feeling of being part of mother Nature and peace for all humans.
Just looking at a 50 or 100 year old tree, not to mention being next to a 500 or 1000 year old sequoia while in a forest, gives an amazing feeling, it makes you feel alive and bonding with nature. Not only do we need to preserve the forest we have, we need to plant more so that future generations can enjoy them.
Before retiring recently, Vahe Balouzian was Senior Director of Investments for BNY Mellon’s International Wealth Management and head of the portfolio management team serving global clients. He was also a member of both Investment Strategy and Alternatives Investment Strategy Committees. He lives in New York and goes on weekends to their house in the forest in Woodstock, NY.
He holds an MBA from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania and B.A. in Economics from American University of Beirut.
Vahe is very enthusiastic about creating forests in Armenia and his experience is very useful to our organisation.
John Stafford is a US financier and entrepreneur, living in London. A graduate from Harvard University, he is committed to philanthropy. After a career in investment banking, John founded in 2008 a solar panel company in the US installing large-scale solar projects with a novel financing model. To this day, he has installed more than 2.3 MW of renewable energy.
John and his family are concerned about global warming. In our western societies, our lifestyles and particularly flying contributes a lot to our carbon emissions. Planting trees is the only available tool we have today to offset our carbon emissions.