Alumni Awards 2021 Winners

Gizem Apak

Brunel University London

After completing Visual Communication Design major and Art Theory and Criticism in Sabancı Üniversity, Gizem joined Brunel University’s MA programme, specialising in Design Strategy and Innovation. 

 Upon returning to Turkey and immersing herself in start-ups and tech companies, she joined Publik  - exclusive advertising partner of LinkedIn and Foursquare in Turkey - as Ads Operation Executive. In just under two years, she managed to win EMEA’s Best Operations Team Member award from LinkedIn Headquarters in London. 

In 2015, it was time again to move overseas, this time to Dublin, Ireland to join Google as a Branding Specialist. Having experienced three different roles at Google and changing countries one more time, Gizem returned to Turkey as a Product Lead in 2019 and continues to be part of Google Taskforce. She manages and leads omni-channel activities of Turkish clients and offers consultation on more efficient use of ad budgets and consumer insights to increase generated revenue.

Gizem has always been an arts & design enthusiast and she has a long background in drawing and enjoys bringing design ideas to life. She also has experience in yoga and mindfulness and is a certified yoga teacher after completion of a 200 hr Yoga Teachers Training in 2020.

Nilüfer Özsoy

Cambridge Judge Business School 

Nilufer Ozsoy is a corporate loan underwriting professional with 10+ years of corporate banking experience in Turkey and international banking experience in the UK at Citibank London, holding a bachelor’s degree in Business Administration from Bosphorus University, Turkey (awarded  with a high honours certificate upon graduation) and post-graduate Master of Finance degree from Cambridge Judge Business School, UK.

She began her career in the Industrial Development Bank of Turkey in 2008 as a financial analyst. Having recognised that project finance loans will be crucial contributors to Turkey’s development, she challenged herself in 2010 by continuing her career in the Project Finance Group of Isbank, the biggest commercial bank in Turkey, as a Senior Credit Allocation Specialist. After graduating with a Master of Finance program at Cambridge Judge Business School in 2013, she has been working in the Financial Institutions & Foreign Capital Companies Group of Isbank. She has so far been involved in the financing of top-tier Turkish corporates and specialized in loan underwriting and continues to contribute financially to Turkey’s development. She also holds Credit Rating, Capital Market Activities and Derivatives Licenses issued by Capital Markets Board of Turkey and she is a member of Cambridge University Finance & Investment Society (CUFIS), Cambridge University Turkish Society and Downing College, which is one of the oldest colleges of Cambridge University.

Her biggest contribution after her studies in the UK has been taking part in the establishment of the Environment Unit within the Project Finance Division of Isbank. The project comprised of assigning environmental ratings to the projects Isbank finances and they were one of the first banks to incorporate this analysis.  

Nilüfer’s long-term career objective is to become a successful investment manager surrounded with in-depth financial knowledge and high decisive capabilities and contribute to global economic and social development, through leading financing projects and interactions with her UK network.

Güngör Erkin Ergüney

London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE)

Erkin Ergüney studied MSc Development Studies at LSE in 2019. Before that, he spent 2 years in Shanghai studying Chinese Politics and Economy. Since his undergraduate years at Boğaziçi University, Erkin and his fellow friends have been trying to expand the academic debate and promote quality education in the idyllic village of Şirince, İzmir. The purpose of Project Arkhe is to bring the best and brightest together to talk, learn and grow in an aesthetic environment. They covered a wide array of disciplines: from economics to gastronomy, philosophy to agriculture. Arkhe is currently expanding to form a research institute and an incubation program for start-ups and social innovators. Erkin is also the founder of Anatolian Insider, a think tank comprised of generation Y and Z working on social issues. He enjoys spending the time under lockdowns by brewing beer and using the random article feature of Wikipedia.