Dr. Mary A. Papazian
Founder
Dr. Mary Papazian is a renowned higher education leader with over 35 years of experience. She is the founder of Arshag Consulting, where she advises organizations on strategy, leadership, digital transformation, GenZ, ESG, skill development and the future of work and learning. Dr. Papazian is a sought-after speaker and advisor to early stage start-ups.
Who Is Arshag Consulting
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What We Do
Arshag Consulting works with the people who carry institutions through change. That means coaching presidents, provosts, and deans as individuals; facilitating sessions for leadership teams working on a transition, a restructuring, or a plan that has stalled; and advising organizations outside the United States on building educational capacity. Engagements run from a single facilitated workshop to a coaching relationship across an academic year.
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Whom We Serve
Presidents and senior academic leaders, at public and independent institutions and at multi-institution systems. Foundations, associations, and companies whose work meets higher education at the point where learning turns into employment. And ministries, universities, and civil-society organizations building educational capacity outside the United States, particularly in Armenia.
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Why Mary Papazian?
Few advisors have sat in all three chairs. Mary Papazian has led two public universities as president, served as provost at a third institution, and now sits as a governing-board vice chair through a four-institution consolidation and its accreditation review. She has spent most of her career on the receiving end of advice, which is a useful place from which to learn what survives contact with a real cabinet, a real faculty senate, and a real board.
The Name
Arshag Consulting carries my family name. Arshagouni brought an inheritance with it: a family and a community that built schools, churches, and institutions wherever it found itself, and that treated the building as an obligation rather than as an achievement.
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The inheritance has run on two tracks, and they have stayed separate.
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Education. Nearly four decades as a scholar of Renaissance literature, a dean, a provost, and the president of two public universities; a Senior Fellowship at the Association of Governing Boards; and this practice.
Armenia. The founding and chairing of the Armenian Society of Fellows; the chairmanship of the advisory board of the Foundation for Armenian Science and Technology; service on Armenia’s Science and Technology Development Council; and the presidency of reArmenia US.
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Neither track has been in service of the other, and they cross constantly. What I know about running a university is what I have to offer Armenian institutions. What I have learned from people who built schools and churches without a state to fund them is what I bring back to American ones, which are discovering that endowments and enrollments are not guarantees. The practice draws on both.
Dr. Papazian’s affiliations are listed for background. Arshag Consulting is an independent practice and does not act for or on behalf of these organizations.