Meet Edit

I’m running for the Glendale Community College Board of Trustees (Area 2) because I believe deeply in public education as a pathway to opportunity, and I want to ensure GCC continues to open doors for every student in our community.

My story is rooted in the immigrant experience. I was born in Armenia and came to Glendale with my family when I was nine years old. I attended Columbus Elementary, Toll Middle School, and Hoover High School. Like so many families here, we believed in the promise of education—and Glendale’s schools and community institutions played a central role in shaping my path.

I began my career as a high school teacher in Los Angeles and Glendale, teaching history, government, and economics. In the classroom, I saw both the transformative power of strong teaching and supportive systems, and the real challenges students face when those systems fall short. That experience grounded my commitment to improving public education, especially for students who have been historically underserved.

I later had the incredible opportunity to serve as a Teaching Ambassador Fellow at the U.S. Department of Education under Secretary Arne Duncan, where I brought educator voice into federal policy conversations. That experience deepened my understanding of how policy shapes classrooms and led me to pursue a Ph.D. in Education from Stanford University, where I studied teaching quality, professional learning, and leadership development.

I’ve worked nationally with schools, districts, and colleges through the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, helping systems improve outcomes for students. I contributed to work like Carnegie Math Pathways—now housed at WestEd—which used improvement science to significantly increase success rates for community college students in remedial math.

More recently, I founded Sovoroom, where I partner with nonprofits, universities, and school systems to build their capacity for continuous improvement, helping leaders turn ideas into real, measurable results for students.

I’m also a parent of two young children attending the GCC Child Development Center lab school. That gives me a deeply personal connection to GCC and a firsthand understanding of how important strong, transparent, and accountable public institutions are for families.

I’m running because Glendale Community College is one of the most important engines of opportunity in our community. It’s where students build pathways to careers, transfer to four-year universities, and create economic mobility for their families. I want to ensure that every student—especially first-generation and immigrant students like me—has a clear pathway to opportunity.

I bring a collaborative, data-informed approach grounded in listening to students, educators, and our community, and I’m committed to doing the work to help GCC deliver on its promise.

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