“I had an absolute need to up my game fast,” says Ronald Alepian, BA 96, about his rise up the ladder at NATIONAL, a Canadian advisory firm. He attributes this to working with extremely senior people in his industry since the beginning of his career.
He started at NATIONAL right after graduating from Concordia.
For almost a decade he remained in its Montreal and Toronto offices, providing strategic advice for major brands.
Alepian went on to executive leadership positions at global companies such as Bell, Nortel, TMX Group and CA Technologies.
He returned to NATIONAL just as it acquired Equicom in 2015.
A recipe for success
Alongside him at NATIONAL are many of Alepian’s long-time friends and collaborators. He cites them as key contributors to his success: “You are a fraction of your full potential unless you’ve got an outstanding team with you.”
Alepian says successful collaboration requires two ingredients: the desire to work with others and the ability to work with people with complimentary skills.
“As a leader, my job is definitely not to manage a team — it’s to bring the right people around the table and point them towards a common destination,” he says.
“The people who are around me in my practice work in the intersection of business, media, capital markets and government — that’s just a really exciting place to operate.”
Although Alepian considers himself a “behind-the-scenes guy,” he has gotten his clients through many highly visible, high-stakes challenges. “What’s incredibly rewarding is when we get to see their goals come to fruition and see those companies succeed,” he says.
The path less taken
In 1991, while Alepian began studying business at McGill University, the Soviet Union collapsed. As this historic event made way for what was then the Armenian Soviet Socialist Republic to become an independent nation, it changed the course of Alepian’s life.
Being of Armenian descent, he spent the next few years building the Canadian Youth Mission to Armenia.
This organization brought student volunteers from Canada and the United Sates to the newly formed independent Republic of Armenia for four- to eight-week periods. Volunteers engaged in everything from construction to community development to infrastructure development.
“It was a combination of recruiting and fundraising in Canada and on-the-ground aid distribution in Armenia,” says Alepian, who visited as a volunteer many times.
“You’re 21, something huge happens and you have no idea that you’re not supposed to be able to do this, so you just do it,” he says. He continues to be active in the Armenian community today. “Looking back, I’m so glad I did it.”
Alepian eventually transferred to Concordia to pursue a BA in the Department of Political Science.
“What I really got out of university was a foundation in being a strong writer,” he says. “It’s served me well for 20 years.”
Alepian attributes his writing skills to working with strong professors who paid as much attention to the content of a written document as to its quality.
What really matters
Since the days when Alepian founded a humanitarian organization while attending university and working a part-time job, he hasn’t slowed down his volunteerism at all. He is currently involved in several non-profit initiatives through Junior Achievement of Central Ontario and the MaRS Centre, an urban innovation hub in Toronto.
“Any itsy-bitsy, tiny bit of time I have left over, I spend with my twin six-year-olds at home,” says Alepian.