Janet Achoukian Andreopoulos is an amateur genealogist who was born and raised in the Detroit area with ancestors from the villages of Evereg and Aintab. She has a B.S. in Accounting from MSU, however her true passion is genealogy, which was sparked while attending the AGBU School. Her family tree of 30k plus continues to expand as she connects with people around the globe. She is particularly interested in the use of autosomal DNA to help reunite people with their long lost relatives. Now a co-admin with the Armenian DNA Project she enjoys teaching people about the use of DNA techniques to advance traditional genealogy. Janet is happily married and resides in Phoenix, Arizona with her husband and 2 sons.
George Aghjayan graduated with honors from Worcester Polytechnic Institute in 1988 with a Bachelor of science degree in Actuarial Mathematics. He achieved Fellowship in the Society of Actuaries in 1996. After a career in both insurance and structured finance, Aghjayan retired in 2014 to concentrate on Armenian related research and projects. His primary area of focus is the demographics and geography of western Armenia as well as a keen interest in the hidden Armenians living there today. Other topics he has written and lectured on include Armenian genealogy and genocide denial. He maintains the website http://westernarmenia.weebly. com/
Mark Arslan recently retired from 35 years at IBM Corporation in technical services and sales. He is married with three children and lives in North Carolina. Mark is one-fourth Armenian; his paternal grandfather Dikran Arslanian immigrated to America in 1906 from Keghi, Erzurum, Turkey and eventually moved to Fresno, California in the early 1930’s, where Mark’s parents grew up. Mark has been researching his Armenia genealogy since the early 1970’s. He founded the Armenian DNA Project (FamilyTreeDNA) in 2005. In 2011, he started the Armenian Immigration Project (an online database of abstracts of primary source material for the study of Armenian immigration to North America through 1930). Mark continues to develop the database and leads a team of volunteers who are adding content from localities in North America where Armenians settled.
Ani Boghikian-Kasparian has been a member of the Detroit Armenian community since her family immigrated to the US in 1969. She graduated from the A.G.B.U Alex and Marie Manoogian School. Ani has a Bachelor of Arts degree in Psychology and Sociology, and Master of Arts degrees in Counseling and in Education. She taught high school social studies and English for ten years, teaching her students in depth about the Armenian Genocide and culture through established curriculum. Since 2004 she teaches Modern Western Armenian as an adjunct professor at the University of Michigan-Dearborn and assists in the Armenian Research Center with acquisitions and archival work, among other things. Her research focus is on collecting testimonies of Armenians who lived in Western Armenian post Genocide, documenting their life experiences, traditions, and life styles.
Tracy Keeney is half Armenian and half French/Canadian. She began researching her Armenian ancestry 3 1/2 years ago as an amateur, but her creative methods for researching her difficult to trace genealogy and locating previously unknown records has resulted in the discovery of 587 previously unknown ancestors and 61 confirmed but previously unknown living relatives in 7 different countries, from Syria, Iran, the United Emirates, Canada, France, Argentina and the US. She is also the founder of The Armenian Genealogy Group on Facebook, with over 4,500 members spanning the globe. She is currently pursuing her credentials as a professional genealogist.
A graduate of Boston University (BA, English) and Simmons College (MS, Library and Information Science), Jen Langley spends her days as the Director of Digital Marketing at Lesley University in Cambridge, MA. She has researched her own genealogy for over 20 years – starting at the National Archives staring at microfilm with her grandfather. Her Armenian research didn’t take off until 10 years ago when she went in search of her Arapkir roots and found herself making connections all across the United States and the world. She writes about her experience at http://www.throwawaymap.com