Meet our founding team
Cyprusays® was founded by Effie Athanassiou, an Australian-born Greek-Cypriot with a background in advertising, creative leadership, and a deep connection to her heritage. Motivated by the lack of accessible tools to learn Cypriot Greek, she created Cyprusays® to preserve the dialect through a modern, mobile-first platform. And so she could learn Cypriot Greek herself. She is joined by her husband and business partner, Costas Athanassiou, who brings commercial insight and a shared passion for celebrating and sustaining Greek and Cypriot culture.
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Founder & CEO
As an Australian born Greek Cypriot, Iphigenia, ‘Effie’, had limited access to appropriate learning channels of the Greek language, let alone the Cypriot Greek dialect, whilst growing up.
15 years in to her advertising & production career with countless successful campaigns and sales for worldwide brands including Kia, Samsung et.al., Effie capitalised on her industry skills and expertise to conceptualise and execute her tech startup whilst filling a global language void.
Cyprusays® is a tribute to her late father, her entire Cypriot Greek family (Kacopieros & Pericles), and is a gift to the next generation - to keep the soul of the language alive, no matter where they are in the world.
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Executive Partner
With a deep passion for preserving Greek & Cypriot culture and language, Konstantinos, ‘Costas’, understands the importance of passing on this traditional knowledge to subsequent generations through a digital platform.
Bringing with him a wealth of business know-how and the motivation required to help bring Cyprusays® to the world, Costas has teamed up with his wife Effie on this socially & culturally significant venture.
Meet our academic & tech team
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Spyros Armostis
Professor & Linguist
Spyros Armostis is an Assistant Professor in Linguistics at the Department of English Studies, University of Cyprus. He holds a PhD and an MPhil in Linguistics (Phonetics) from the University of Cambridge and a BA in Classics from the University of Cyprus. His research interests lie mainly in the fields of phonetics, phonology, sociolinguistics, clinical linguistics, grapholinguistics and language documentation and revitalisation.
Focal points of his work have been the study of Cypriot Greek and Cypriot Arabic, but he has also worked on Standard Modern Greek, Pontic Greek, English, French and Cypriot Turkish. Finally, he is the Coordinator of the “Cy[Φ]” (pronounced [ˈsaɪ̯ ˈfaɪ̯]) Phonetics Lab, Department of English Studies, University of Cyprus.
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Constantina Fotiou
Teacher Trainer & Linguist
Constantina Fotiou holds a PhD and MA in Sociolinguistics from the University of Essex (UK) and a BA in English language and literature from the University of Cyprus. She is an English language teacher trainer with special training on materials and syllabus development as well as technology-assisted language teaching and learning. She has completed postdoctoral research work on contemporary Cypriot Greek and is also the co-author of a textbook for teaching Cypriot Greek as a foreign language.
Her scholarly output includes peer-reviewed journal articles, edited volumes and book chapters. Constantina is also active in academic outreach by frequently contributing articles to Cypriot newspapers and publishing blogs on topics related to language teaching and learning.
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Dr. Natalia Pavlou
Lecturer & Linguist
Dr. Natalia Pavlou is a linguist from Cyprus who has worked at the University of Cyprus and the United Arab Emirates University. She earned her PhD in Linguistics from the University of Chicago in 2018. Her research focuses on morphosyntax with a particular emphasis on Cypriot Greek and Standard Modern Greek. Dr. Pavlou has conducted fieldwork on Cypriot Maronite Arabic (Sanna) and has been involved in research with Greek Cypriot heritage speakers.
Dr. Pavlou approaches language with deep intellectual curiosity, viewing it as a window into the human mind.
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Hoàng Nguyễn
Chief Data & Technology Officer
Hoàng Nguyễn is a seasoned technologist and enterprise architect, a true polymath in his field, he began programming at the age of six and was awarded his first software patent at twelve. Internationally awarded by the United Nations and across the Asia–Pacific region including multiple ICT awards and Industry Leader of the Year 2025.
Hoàng brings a rare blend of technical mastery and creative problem-solving. His expertise covers cloud computing, artificial intelligence and data-driven solutions that are always built with a strong focus on security, ethics and user privacy.
At Cyprusays®, Hoàng leads the data and technology vision, overseeing the development of the world’s first Cypriot Greek speech pronunciation engine. His innovative work integrates ancient linguistic features such as breves, stress marks and diacritics unique to the Cypriot Greek dialect, allowing them to appear and function correctly in the digital space.
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Dr. Chryso Hadjidemetriou
Linguist & UX Researcher
Dr. Chryso Hadjidemetriou is a qualitative user researcher with a PhD and MA in Sociolinguistics from the University of Essex (UK) and a BA in English Language and Literature from the University of Cyprus. She has a background in sociolinguistics, language contact and change, language rights and linguistic validation and localisation. She has worked extensively with minority language communities across Cyprus, the UK and New Zealand.As the lead user researcher for Cyprusays, she conducted in-depth qualitative interviews with members of the Greek Cypriot community in Australia, applying thematic analysis to uncover key user needs, expectations and pain points. Her work informed early-stage product discovery and the app’s initial design strategy. She currently works in linguistic validation and localisation, bridging cultural understanding with user experience in global products.
