ATHENS – College Year in Athens (CYA) continues its Virtual Lecture Series on Wednesday, April 21, 12 PM EDT / 7 PM Athens, with Nicholas Yatromanolakis, Greece's Deputy Minister of Culture and Sports, responsible for Contemporary Culture, speaking about Culture as a Driver for Growth. A powerful advocate for contemporary culture in Greece, Yatromanolakis is the first Greek government official to be appointed to this newly established section of this Ministry.

Besides its intrinsic value, culture can be a powerful driver for development, with community-wide social, economic, and environmental impacts. The adoption of alternative, culture-centric, sustainable growth models for local communities and regions can create ecosystems that incorporate the tourism, education, agri-food, retail sectors, and more. Furthermore, the cultural and creative sector is in a strategic position to offer added value across industries.  For all these reasons, they represent one of the most rapidly expanding sectors in the global economy, creating sustainable jobs along the way. Culture-led development also includes a range of non-monetized benefits, such as greater social inclusiveness and rootedness, resilience, innovation, creativity and entrepreneurship for individuals and communities, and the use of local resources, skills, and knowledge.

Moderator for the discussion will be CYA Trustee and alumna Elaine Papoulias (CYA '91), Executive Director of the Minda de Gunzburg Center for European Studies at Harvard University. Two members of CYA's academic community, Athena Hadji and Antonios Giannopoulos, will participate during the Q&A session following Yatromanolakis' presentation.

To participate in this Webinar, please register via Zoom: shorturl.at/nvCST.

After registration, you will receive a confirmation email to join the discussion. You may ask questions through the Q&A feature on Zoom. If you cannot attend the "live" event but would like to receive a recording of the lecture, please register and it will be sent to you 1-2 days after the event.

Yatromanolakis was appointed Deputy Minister of Culture and Sports, responsible for Contemporary Culture, in January 2021, while he had served as General Secretary of Contemporary Culture, since August 2019. He holds a BA in Political Science & International Relations from Panteion University, Athens, and a Masters in Public Policy from Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government in the U.S.

From January 2017-July 2019, Yatromanolakis served as Chief Marketing & Communication Officer of the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Cultural Center. He has served in various senior positions in Greek and multinational companies such as Microsoft, V+O Communication, S&B Industrial Minerals, and Alpha TV, as well as at the Hellenic Foundation of European & Foreign Policy (ELIAMEP) and Harvard University. He has also worked as an independent strategy, public affairs and communication consultant. His work has received several awards in Greece and abroad. He was a founding member and a Steering Committee member of the Potami political party, as well as the party’s campaign manager for the 2014 European Parliament elections. In the January 2015 parliamentary elections he ranked second among the party’s candidates in the City of Athens district. He left Potami in 2016. He’s been active in the field of human rights, focusing on LGBTQI+ rights. He’s participated voluntarily in nonprofit organizations focusing on the social inclusion of vulnerable populations, as well as the mental and physical health of children.

He is a 2013 Marshall Memorial Fellow. In 2019, he was elected member of the Board of Directors of the Harvard Club of Greece. He has edited several publications, including New Approaches to Balkan Studies, ed. Dimitris Keridis, Ellen Elias Bursac and Nicholas Yatromanolakis (Dulles, VA: Brassey’s 2003). He contributed to the World Economic Forum’s 2001 Global Competitiveness Report. He was the scientific editor of the Greek version of the NATO Handbook, and ELIAMEP’s occasional papers and publications editor in 1996-98.