About ABL
President & CEO“I envision the day when kids from South Los Angeles to Harlem to Zambia, Mexico, Lebanon, and India, the four corners of our world see themselves as rightfully belonging at the table having an equal opportunity to help realize their dreams; I envision them using fresh paradigms that contribute to new solutions by creating prosperity, fulfillment, and peace for all humankind!” - Anna Ouroumian, ABL President & CEO
When she addresses a crowd of high school students, many of whom have seen gang warfare, domestic violence, racism and drug abuse, she tells them that if she could survive the trials of her early life, then they can too. Teenager Ivan Barba sits spellbound listening to Ms. Ouroumian. “I thought I had it hard,” he says, “but she made me realize I should be grateful for what I have.” When she came to Los Angeles alone, at the age of 17, Ms. Ouroumian had $160 in her pocket, barely spoke English, and had two books—a biography of Ronald Reagan and a book on the Harvard Business School. Above all, she was determined to succeed. In her senior year in 1994, she received the Chancellor’s Service Award and was one of four out of 10,500 seniors to receive the UCLA Alumni Association’s highest honor--the “Outstanding Senior Award”--for her academic achievements, as well as service to UCLA and the community. Furthermore, she was the only student to be highlighted during graduation in front of 15,000 students and their guests in Pauley Pavilion. Anna is a trailblazer in the national community service movement. In 1993, Anna was selected along with 1,500 young people to heed President Clinton’s call to serve inner-city youth across America as part of the pilot “Summer of Service” program, the precursor to AmeriCorps. Her first job was working for the AmeriCorps/Interfaith Hunger Coalition, a collaboration of over 1,000 faith-based organizations joined to fight hunger. There she created the “Watts Threefold Economic Empowerment Project” with the idea of setting up a community garden, a micro enterprise and a farmer’s market to bring fresh produce to the residents of the neighboring Jordan Downs Housing Project and historic 103rd street as a symbol to help create jobs and revive the economically depressed community. Later, she assumed various leadership positions with AmeriCorps/ Building Up Los Angeles first as Team Leader for the Hollywood Cluster and later was promoted to Cluster Coordinator for Central City South overseeing over 23 AmeriCorps members, a team leader, and two assistant leaders. In those positions, Anna addressed the needs of thousands of low-income families in housing, education, and public safety by setting up in-school and after-school tutoring and mentoring programs and working with various schools, community based organizations, corporations, and political representatives. Building Up Los Angeles is a collaboration of over 150 community based organizations and universities created in the aftermath of the Los Angeles riots in 1992 to address the social needs of the various inner cities. Anna’s organizing of the residents in the Yucca corridor in Hollywood along with then Councilwoman Jackie Goldberg, Falcon, and the Hollywood Police Department was a critical precursor to the cleaning of the community and the ensuing revival of Hollywood. After two years of service in AmeriCorps, Anna was selected as one of 15 fellows to serve on the prestigious Governor’s Executive Fellowship Program in Sacramento. Her appointment by Governor Wilson was with the State Attorney General’s Office where she drafted and edited public messages for the attorney general, and briefed him on public policy issues. Later, she joined Athletes and Entertainers for Kids where she coordinated the Ventura County Mentoring Collaborative partnership as part of Governor Wilson’s California Mentor Initiative. She also helped coordinate events with various celebrities such as Shaquille O’Neal and Kathy Ireland to help provide positive role models for inner-city youth. Through a college friend, Ms. Ouroumian was introduced to Pete Hernandez, then Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Academy of Business Leadership. Even though the board had closed the search for an Executive Director, Ms. Ouroumian convinced the Chairman to give her a chance. “I immediately fell in love with the mission of ABL,” she says. “I felt I had what it took to do the job. The position seemed perfect: it combined my love to empower kids and my desire to work with corporate America to help open doors.” Ms. Ouroumian was hired in 1998 to revitalize the struggling non-profit organization. ABL takes high potential low opportunity kids and exposes them to a world of unlimited opportunities by teaching them capitalism, leadership, and business values. Through programs on college campuses, ABL uses business as a vehicle to encourage underserved youth to stay in school and develop higher personal, educational, and career goals. She quickly discovered the financial difficulties of ABL. Her board worried for the organization’s future. Anna set out to turn ABL around and within five weeks, she put together a fund-raiser and raised $52,000. Since then, Anna has raised over $9 million and has quintupled the budget of the organization. Next, she recruited several board members and formed a corporate advisory board made up of prominent leaders from major corporations. She also recruited Actor and Community Activist Edward James Olmos as Spokesperson for ABL. Recognizing the need for follow-up programs to the Summer Business Institute, in 1999, Ms. Ouroumian created the Ambassador and BOLT (Building Outstanding Leaders Today) programs. The two comprehensive programs are year-round and are available to the top 20% of the Summer Business Institute (SBI) graduates. BOLT provides one-on-one mentoring, pre-college workshops, an internship placement, additional business development training and Saturday Seminars. Also, students work on a community service project, and are required to perform peer coaching the following summer as a prerequisite for graduation. Moreover, in 2002, thanks to generous funding from Merrill Lynch, Anna added two components to BOLT – the Advanced Stock Market Competition and CEO Roundtables. In the Stock Market Competition, students manage fictitious portfolios that simulate the stock market. Student winners earn college scholarships. Through the CEO Roundtables, students interact with CEO’s and senior executive teams of top corporations; they engage in problem solving, thus simulating real life scenarios that expose them to what it would take to run a major corporation. The Ambassador program allows students to represent ABL at their respective schools and help with recruitment. In exchange, students learn advanced presentation, leadership, and communication skills. In 2001, Ms. Ouroumian formed a partnership with USC where undergraduate students from the Marshall School of Business mentored BOLT participants as part of the pre-college component. Today, ABL’s programs focus on entrepreneurial training, financial literacy, and career and leadership development. In January 2000, in recognition of her outstanding contributions to the organization, the board appointed Ms. Ouroumian President of ABL, and in June of 2003, the board named Anna as President & CEO. Through her dynamic, creative, strategic and forward-thinking leadership style, using her personal message of triumph over adversity as an orphan survivor from war-torn Beirut, Ms. Ouroumian has catapulted ABL in new directions. During her first two years at ABL, for the first time, not only did the organization extend its reach to middle schools, but it also tripled in size. Since 1998, Anna expanded programs throughout the Southland, added new programs and special events, quintupled the number of volunteers to over 500, and graduated over 1,600 students, out of the total 2,000 SBI graduates since 1991. Over the past seven years, the 1,600 students have come from 265 middle and high schools and over 65 school districts from Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside, San Diego, and San Bernardino Counties. In addition, under her tenure, ABL reached over 36,000 students through workshops and presentations at hundreds of schools. Furthermore, Anna strengthened relationships and forged strategic partnerships with existing and new corporate sponsors such as Edison International, First Pacific Advisors, The Capital Group Companies, Inc., and Merrill Lynch, among others. In 2000, she helped ABL acquire a 4,000 square-foot building on a 10,000 square foot lot as a donation from then Pacific Bell, in the heart of South Los Angeles. The building has now an appraised value of over $900,000. In 2002, Anna shepherded ABL to receive the largest Investing Pays Off grant from Merrill Lynch for Southern California and one of three largest for the state of California out of 24 statewide funded organizations. The partnership with Merrill Lynch has helped propel ABL to a new phase in its growth in order to widen its reach and ensure the longevity and viability of the organization. Through its current and future strategic partnerships, ABL will continue to expand its reach and target underserved students in Northern California and throughout the United States in the near future. ABL’s strategic partnerships are critical for providing programs that are comprehensive and unique to any business curricula currently offered to underserved high school students in the region. Anna’s vision is to take ABL national and provide this opportunity to every student who needs it. Currently, Anna is working on expanding to new sites and adding new programs such as The ABL Center for Ideation to give students even more opportunities to excel and pursue their educational and professional dreams. At the Center for Ideation, ABL youth will develop and market commercially viable business ideas and concepts to corporations. In addition to her tireless efforts on behalf of our youth through her work at ABL, Ms. Ouroumian is a highly sought after national motivational speaker that has been invited to speak to various groups around the country. Her speaking engagements have ranged from motivating over 2,500 AT&T executives and employees, to addressing the University of Southern California Marshall School of Business alumni and students, to inspiring youth as Graduation Keynote Speaker at the Daughters of American Revolution Hall in our Capital for Watkins Mills High School of Maryland. In 2003, Anna Ouroumian was one of three featured guest speakers invited to address over three thousand JPMorgan Private Bank executives and employees around the country via satellite teleconferencing for their Global Diversity Week training. Anna is a past member of the Junior League of Los Angeles; immediate past founding Vice President of the Beverly Hills Junior Chamber of Commerce; and immediate past board member of the Los Angeles Women’s Appointment Collaborative and the Los Angeles Women’s Foundation. In the summer of 2003, she helped co-found the Women’s Foundation of California. She currently serves on its Southern California Leadership Board and is a member of its LA Donor Circle. She also serves on the Southern California Edison Consumer Advisory Panel, the Merrill Lynch Women’s Advisory Council, the East Los Angeles Classic Theater Board, and the Executive Committee of the Alumni Association of the American Armenian International College. In 2003, Anna was elected to Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government Women’s Leadership Board, as part of a group of over 100 influential women from around the world who are dedicated to advancing women in the U.S. and globally through leadership, advocacy, and dialogue on public policy. Ms. Ouroumian was featured in the August 2003 issue of Hi Magazine; the August 21, 2000 issue of Forbes; the January 2001 issue of Reader’s Digest; KCET Life & Times “Movers, Shakers & Thinkers” section, on April 30th, 2001; the cover of Arab-American Magazine, Winter 2001; and Minorities in Business, Winter 2002. She has received numerous awards and most recently was recognized by the Los Angeles County Office of Education for her outstanding contributions to the School-to-Career initiative. In addition, in March of 2006, Anna was interviewed by Tyra Banks on her show for a feature to be aired in April of 2006, and was interviewed by Larry Carroll for Turning Point Business Minute on KFWB 980AM radio. Furthermore, on March 17, 2006, along with Debbie Allen and other prominent women, Anna will be recognized by the Los Angeles Chapter of the National Association of Women Business Owners with the “Inspiration Award.” Ms Ouroumian is exploring the possibility of taking the L.A.-based ABL organization national, starting with a 50 student pilot program in New York City or Boston, with a target date of summer 2007. She enthuses, “there is a tremendous need for programs like ABL where certain young people would normally fall through the cracks, and not have an opportunity to know their options and thus realize their potential. Every kid deserves a chance, and we have the responsibility to ensure that.”
StaffAnna Ouroumian Nikki Kwan James Ouyang Angela B. Chinn Jon Reichert Joanne Sathokvorasat Salvador Flores Vanessa Gutierrez Neal Sperling
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Some people fold under adversity. Others rise above it--they survive, grow, and flourish. Anna Ouroumian not only survived early childhood in an orphanage in war-torn Beirut, but today she is a successful young woman who personifies the American Dream.