She spent years in pharmaceutical sales and hospital-based work before deciding to go back to school.
She’s dedicated her research to something many people don’t know has a name: post-separation abuse. She will graduate next year with a doctorate in counseling psychology from Felician University.
Talin Medzadourian Araian is not just the recipient of Executive Women of New Jersey’s Graduate Merit Award — she is the personification of what the award represents: a unique program that provides tuition assistance to women who are nontraditional graduate students in New Jersey.
So, it was only fitting that she received a rousing ovation after giving a moving acceptance speech before about 500 people at the Legacy Castle in Pompton Plains on Wednesday night.
Going back, she said, was not easy.
“Returning to graduate school after two decades was not an easy decision,” she said. “It required sacrifices, difficult choices and the willingness to start over at a point in life when many people are already well established in their careers.”
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Her dissertation looks at intimate partner violence, particularly coercive control and the abuse that can follow a breakup through courts, finances and custody arrangements.
“For many women, leaving an abusive relationship is not the end of their struggle,” she said.
She is examining whether economic vulnerability, especially for women without access to family finances or who are stay-at-home mothers, makes that abuse more severe. She said the study will be one of the first quantitative studies on the topic.
Medzadourian Araian is a doctoral intern at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai and a licensed associate counselor in New Jersey. She wants to become a licensed psychologist focused on women going through major life transitions, including motherhood, separation and chronic illness.
She is a two-time recipient of the EWNJ President’s Scholarship and received Felician’s Beacon of Social Justice Award.
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Retired state Supreme Court Justice Jaynee LaVecchia, now a partner at McCarter & English, introduced her. She called Medzadourian Araian “a woman who has changed course, pursued an advanced degree, and now is using it to help and support others.”
Medzadourian Araian had a message for the policymakers in the room.
“I believe we have a responsibility to ensure the systems that women depend on reflect those realities, whether in the workplace, in education, or in the family court systems,” she said.
She said the scholarship has meant more than money.
“It’s been a reminder that our experiences, our sacrifices and our perseverance have value,” she said.
And her own path has taught her something, too.
“Success does not have an expiration date,” she said.
