Ms. Eliza Minasyan of Yerevan, Armenia, has been named executive director/coordinator of the Jinishian Memorial Program (JMP), effective Feb. 1. She succeeds the Rev. Victor Makari, who retired late last year.

Minasyan was previously executive director of the Jinishian Memorial Foundation in the Republic of Armenia. In this position she directed 15 staff members and managed community-based projects and programs in civil society, community health development, education, and economic development throughout Armenia. She helped helped JMP’s Louisville management team carry out the strategic planning process for all JMP sites, specifically Lebanon and Syria.
 
Minasyan, a graduate of State Engineering University of Armenia (1993) and the American University of Armenia (MBA, 1998) has also worked for Heifer International as coordinator for planning, evaluation, and training in Heifer’s Central and Eastern European program and for the Yerevan-based Business Support Center, with extensive training experiences and field work in rural Armenia.

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Judson Taylor has joined the staff of Communications and Funds Development in Louisville as communications associate for World Mission. In his new position he will assist Presbyterian World Mission with its communications and marketing strategies and write for and edit its publications.

Taylor was formerly director of communications for First Presbyterian Church of San Antonio, Texas.

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The Fund for Theological Education (FTE) has elected Florida Smith Ellis as chair of its board of trustees and has appointed three new trustees: the Rev. David E. Goatley, the Rev. Sara Hayden and the Rev. Donna Claycomb Sokol.

FTE’s mission is to support a new generation of gifted and diverse young leaders for vocations in pastoral ministry and theological education. The Fund annually awards more than $1.5 million in fellowships and leadership development opportunities to gifted undergraduate, seminary and doctoral students, and equips congregations and others with resources and practices to nurture vocational discernment in young people and their adult mentors.

Smith Ellis has served as an FTE Trustee since 2003 and as a board member of Presbytrerian Church (U.S.A.)-related Columbia Theological Seminary in Decatur, Ga., for more than 20 years. She is an elder at First Presbyterian Church of Atlanta, where she served as clerk of session. She has also been moderator of the Greater Atlanta Presbytery.

Goatley, a Baptist minister, is executive secretary-treasurer of the Lott Carey Baptist Foreign Mission Convention, an international Christian missions agency. He also is the executive director of Lott Carey International, a global relief and development agency based in Washington, D.C. that helps improve the quality of life in marginalized communities around the world.

Hayden is executive director of the Tri-Presbytery New Church Development Commission, which strategically advances the vision of the PC(USA) to “grow Christ’s church deep and wide” by developing and supporting diverse faith communities throughout Georgia.

Sokol is pastor of Mount Vernon Place United Methodist Church, a diverse congregation in downtown Washington, DC. A former White House intern in the Clinton Administration, she has served as the minister of congregational care at First United Methodist Church in Hendersonville, N.C. and as director of admissions at Duke Divinity School.