NURTURING RESILIENCE THROUGH THE PANDEMIC
THIRD CONFERENCE OF ROMANIAN AMERICAN PROFESSIONALS
Opening Plenary Session: June 4th 2021
The plenary session featured three honorary consuls of Romania in various major diaspora hubs in the United States. The first to be given the podium was the Honorary Consul of Romania in Seattle, Mr. Iulian Calinov, a technical Program Manager at Facebook who is highly engaged in various local heritage language and cultural programs as well as in the mapping of diaspora community-based organizations. He gave a broad profile overview of the Seattle community being dominated by skilled professionals who arrived largely in the past decades, many brought in by Microsoft, Google and Facebook, a fortunate dynamic that ensured the insertion and positive influence of this diaspora hub in pursuing its interests at a local level and joining national initiatives. Mr. Calinov briefly spoke of the efforts directed towards second-generation Romanian Americans, establishing cultural heritage awards, and mentoring young leaders. He graciously shared his time giving Wesleyan University undergrad student Alex Trufinescu, his mentee and award recipient, the opportunity to present the results of an associative community study conducted as an internship project. The latter presented on the census supported distribution of Romanian population versus the IRS registration of Romanian organizations in the US, the make-up of these non-profit entities, their financial resilience, and the limits of this first study in capturing only those entities that incorporate “Romanian” in their registered titles.