Veronika Zonabend

Veronika Zonabend is the founding partner and the Chair of the Board of Governors of UWC Dilijan College in Armenia. She is actively involved in philanthropy, focusing primarily on the promotion of global education. Together with her husband, Ruben Vardanyan, she is the founder of the RVVZ Family Foundation and the IDeA Charitable Foundation which implement philanthropic sustainable development projects in Russia and Armenia. Ms. Zonabend sits on the Boards of Trustees at UWC International (UK) and the American University of Armenia and chairs the Board of Directors at Teach For Armenia Educational Foundation.

In the 2000s, she was an entrepreneur and undertook projects within such diverse sectors as Hospitality, Film Distribution and Production. Notable amongst these was the co-production of “Coco Chanel & Igor Stravinsky”, a film that closed the Cannes Festival in 2009. Prior to that, she worked for several years in the banking sector, becoming the Deputy Head of the Foreign Exchange Department of Tveruniversal Bank in 1993.

In 2014, the President of the Republic of Armenia awarded Veronika Zonabend the Order of Friendship in recognition of her many contributions to fostering educational development and international collaboration in science and education, as well as for her substantial efforts in building the international school in Dilijan and implementing academic programs.