AT A GLANCE:
Jackie Abramian recounts discovering BizGees in 2009 and helping amplify its media visibility, from refugee microfinance work across Uganda, Kenya, Pakistan, and Lebanon to Web3 projects and A4R Media Hub. She highlights Gen Z "Vibers" interns' Ink & Ashes journalism, partnership with Impact Entrepreneur Magazine, and years of gratifying collaboration with Zufi.
Connecting the Dots to Amplify BizGees Social Impact Advocacy
In 2009, I came across Zulfi’s LinkedIn post about BizGees and reached out to learn more about the FinTech startup positioning itself as the catalyst for the world’s refugee populations. BizGees had already been recognized with high-profile awards at the Infosys Challenge for Financial Inclusion, the UNICEF FinTech Jam for Good. and the EUvsVirus Hackathon.
Since that initial connection, BizGees’ innovative offerings have peaked and garnered further recognition.
What piqued my attention initially was the interest and collateral-free microfinance and custom trade finance offerings BizGees had designed to uplift and transform refugees in post-conflict regions into micro-business owners. Empowering reconstruction in post-conflict regions was timely as the global refugee crisis was on an uptick.
BizGees’ mission uniquely aligned with my personal and professional focus. As a board member of Democracy Today NGO in Armenia, I had witnessed how projects that empower women and youth financially impact rural regions and create an ecosystem of change that uplifts the whole community. As a corporate communications consultant, I use creative strategies to amplify tech and social enterprise organizations by highlighting their unique stories and tangible impact. As a magazine contributor, I focus on social justice issues, profiling women social entrepreneurs whose creative business models and services help elevate and improve the lives of forcibly, internally displaced, and underserved people to achieve financial independence.
In discussions with Zufi, we decided I could help amplify BizGees’ brand visibility across media platforms that focused on social enterprises. We focused on the global impact programs across Uganda, Kenya, Pakistan (Swat Valley) - and later on Lebanon, the UK, and the U.S. Secured media interviews allowed Zufi to highlight unique stories across See Change Magazine, in Thrive Global’s Social Entrepreneurs – What Inspires and Motivates These Change Makers article, in TheBlockTalk’s Baking Bread in a Refugee Camp Just Got Easier and on the Superpowers for Good with host, Devin Thorpe.
BizGees was gaining momentum - both in media coverage and new offerings.
Global Cadence and BizGees soon forged an agreement to continue media visibility efforts as BizGees delved into Web3.0 projects. Later, as an advisory board member, I witnessed Zufi and his team launch the innovative digital platform A4R Media Hub, merging AI-assisted storytelling, gaming-inspired interactive journalism, and Web3 publishing tools to empower marginalized and refugee communities through alternative finance and decentralized technology offerings.
As an internship host partner to Oxford University career services, King’s College, London, and SciencesPo, BizGees elevated the power of storytelling by Gen Zs with a special focus on post-conflict regions.
The globally-minded, informed students who joined as interns delved into the complexities of forcibly displaced refugees. Leveraging their academic studies, insights, keen curiosity, and investigative research, the interns methodically worked on articles, guided by the BizGees team, to unveil the lived hardships of famous refugee artists who had survived wars and displacement and restarted lives in foreign lands, applying a uniquely creative angle that was shaped and informed by their refugee experiences. The thought-provoking articles, AI games, and platforms written and built by Gen Z groups fully dissected the distinct lived challenges facing post-conflict regions and informed and educated a wider audience previously uninformed about such issues.
BizGees’ momentum and reach were widening.
The Gen Z “Vibers” initiated the Ink & Ashes articles on artisans, forced displacement, and what happens when the war ends, enhancing their training to conduct in-depth research, verify sources, and dig into and tell relatable, impactful stories underreported in mainstream media. The well-crafted investigative narratives were well aligned with professional investigative journalists’ reporting standards.
These professionally crafted articles and AI-enabled, vibe-coded games and platforms became a critical part of the student interns’ academic work, catapulting their CVs to shape their professional lives.
When Zufi and I co-authored Empowering Changemakers and Community Rebuilding for Impact Entrepreneur Magazine, its global platform of nearly 60,000 active members in 180 countries was informed about BizGees’ tailored strategies. But more profoundly, it revealed GenZ citizen journalists’ immensely informative, human-centered, collaborative articles and underscored the need for investors to support the continuation of this critical work.
This led to discussions on possible platforms where GenZ citizen journalists’ in-depth articles could be published and republished to help expand the audience reach.
Discussions with Impact Entrepreneur Magazine founder/editor Laurie Lane-Zucker resulted in A4R Media Hub becoming a content partner of the Magazine’s Impact Journalism Institute. Coverage by Gen Z journalists of how the Impact Economy is developed and tested in communities affected by conflict, displacement, and economic instability is now published on a global platform, reaching audiences worldwide – beyond the BizGees platform on Substack.
Several articles from A4R Media Hub have already been cross-published along with Impact Entrepreneur Magazine’s original journalism and analysis.
What BizGees has managed to create and build, with full collaboration with Gen Zs, can be replicated across other social enterprise platforms - but only with a professionally capable team willing to invest time, money, global insights, and media outreach.
Continued collaboration with BizGees and Zufi has been nothing short of being immensely gratifying. And the future looks more innovative, human-centered, and impactful as BizGees and GenZs jointly create an offering direly needed in our world: a well-balanced, informative, and inclusive platform aimed at driving a future of economic impact as humanitarian cuts underscore the critical need for economically impactful solutions across a growing number of post-conflict regions.
Jackie Abramian is a corporate communications consultant and founder of Global Cadence Consultancy. She has served on BizGees Advisory Board and the Board of Democracy Today NGO in Armenia for decades, and is a magazine contributor on social justice issues and women changemakers.
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