Four people have been selected as finalists for the first Aurora Prize for Awakening Humanity, a new annual award given in part by one of Boston’s most prominent venture capitalists.
The prize was created by Noubar Afeyan, chief executive and cofounder of biotech venture fund Flybridge Capital in Boston, along with Vartan Gregorian, president of the Carnegie Corporation in New York, and Ruben Vardanyan, an entrepreneur and philanthropist.
The Aurora Prize is given in commemoration of the Armenian Genocide, in which an estimated 1.5 million Armenians were killed during World War 1.
An international group, including George Clooney and Nobel Peace Prize winners Elie Wiesel and Oscar Arias, will choose the winner, who will receive the prize at an award ceremony in Yerevan, Armenia on April 24.
The winner will receive $100,000 and a $1 million donation to the charitable organization of their choosing. The grant was funded by Afeyan, Gregorian, and Vardanyan.
The four finalist are Marguerite Barankitse, a humanitarian from Burundi; Dr. Tom Catena, the sole doctor for half a million people in the Sudanese mountains; Syeda Ghulam Fatima, an advocate for laborers being held unlawfully by their employers in Pakistan; and Father Bernard Kinvi, a priest from Togo who heads a Catholic mission in war-torn Central African Republic.
Afeyan is an increasingly prominent figure in the philanthropic scene in Boston, with much of his effort aimed at improving conditions in Armenia.
In the early 2000s, Afeyan began surveying Armenia for potential investments through a development project called Armenia-2020. The project was later folded into Vardanyan’s social enterprise, Initiatives for Development of Armenia, which has since begun developing the Armenian town of Dilijan. Its capstone project is a new boarding school that enrolled nearly 100 students in 2014.
Afeyan helped establish the National Competitiveness Foundation of Armenia, a public-private partnership to raise Armenia’s international profile through investment in tourism, healthcare, and education. He sits on the Board of Overseers of the Boston Symphony Orchestra and donates to area charter schools.
Afeyan cofounded Flybridge Capital in 2000. Today the firm manages a portfolio of $1.4 billion in assets.