Archives: Speakers

Özgür Kaynar, who completed his undergraduate studies at Computer Engineering department of the Middle East Technical University, and started his business life at Koçbank Bilgi Teknolojileri division in 1994. As the lead of the team who commissioned the Data Warehouse at Koçbank in 2000, he, right after the installation of Data Warehouse, helped develop many vertical applications such as Customer Profitability, Operational CRM, Campaign Management and Senior Management Reporting systems for many different business groups across the bank.

He played an active role during Koçbank-Yapı Kredi Bank merger in late 2006. After the merger, he helped many vertical solutions to be rolled out at the bank’s credit card, retail marketing, risk management, finance management and inspection teams in collaboration with the data warehouse and business acumen team. BASEL II, Risk Monitoring, CRM, Fraud systems, Instant campaign management in particular can be cited among such solutions.

Özgür Kaynar who has been leading other software teams apart from Data warehouse since 2010 was a part of the management team that commissioned the Information Technologies and Banking Transformation Program that was started in this period.

In later 2012, he resigned from Yapı Kredi Bank and started working as a senior sector consultant for Teradata technology company specializing in data analysis. Along with the said position, he plays an active role in the field of generating the road map for and rolling out projects of Analytic Data Transformation and Data Governance in parallel to Digitalization Transformation programs at many private sector companies.

Since 2018 he has been working as a Senior Industrial Consultant within the structure of Komtaş.

Kerem AK, Regional Head of Product Program Management Category Refrigeration at BSH Home Appliances of T-MEA-CIS region (Turkey, Middle East, Africa and Commonwealth of Independent States). Joined BSH in 2006, Kerem has over 11 years of experience in diverse disciplines covering information technologies, aftersales, business development and product management. Now in his current position he drives the product strategy and innovation initiatives to set and ensure achievement of growth targets of the region.

Kerem received his Master degree in Business Informatics from the Technical University of Vienna.

Lale Ergin is an Executive Committee Member at Borusan Holding, also heading Strategy, Business Development and Innovation functions groupwide.

Immediately after graduating from Middle East Technical University with a Business Administration major, she has joined Borusan Holding in 1996. Ms. Ergin also completed the MBA program at the Koç University in 2001.

During her career at Borusan Holding, she has assumed various responsibilities mainly on strategy, business development, M&A, innovation and digitalization areas. As part of her role in Holding Executive Committee, she is currently responsible from Logistics, Energy, Engine Valves and Used Car Remarketing Business lines of the Group and acts as the Executive Board Member in these subsidiaries.

Some of her ongoing  functional responsibilities include: facilitating the portfolio strategy of the Group and leading the projects performed in terms of active management of Borusan Group portfolio (new business start-ups, divestitures etc.),  leading big / step growth projects and M&A activities of existing operating subsidiaries, facilitating the Strategy Management Process among the Group, managing the innovation (new products, services and business models) practice Groupwide, including management of some key transformational innovation projects / spin offs.

Ms. Ergin is also a Board Member in various Borusan Group companies such as Borusan EnBW Energy, Borusan Logistics, Borusan Machinery & Power Systems, Supsan, Borusan Manheim and all the incubation companies of the Group.

Lale Ergin is a Board member in Turkish Quality Association (KALDER) and a member of TUSİAD and Corporate Governance Association of Turkey.

Zehra Çataltepe is a professor at Istanbul Technical University, Faculty of Computer and Informatics and also the co-founder of tazi.ai, which is a startup company developing continuously learning machine learning solutions in banking, insurance and telco industries.

She received her M.Sc. and Ph.D. degrees from California Institute of Technology in Computer Science.
Her research interests include machine learning algorithms and software, feature selection, anomaly detection, online machine learning, machine learning for human learning, learning on heterogeneous, networked and time series data, and big data.

She has both industry and academia experience and has taken part in EU and Tubitak projects as a referee, researcher and principal investigator. She has 14 patents and over 80 publications.

Having graduated from the Department of International Relations of Gazi University in 2003, Safiye joined İş Bankası family in 2005. After working in the Human Resources Recruitment Unit for about 5 years, she was appointed to the Digital Banking Division. Since 2010, she has worked at various divisions at the Digital Banking Division. She became one of the first employees of the new Innovation Unit established in 2016 during the digital transformation process of İş Bankası. In lined with the target of İş Bankası to support entrepreneurial ecosystem and to cooperate with technological initiatives, the Innovation Unit pioneered the opening of an office at Kolektif House, Levent, one of the centers for the entrepreneurial ecosystem, in October 2016, and then led the commissioning of the Workup Entrepreneurship Program at the same center in May 2017. Safiye, who is part of the founding team of the Workup Entrepreneurship Program, was involved in the process of putting this program into practice from the idea phase and constantly improving it thereafter.

Ömer Erkmen who had his Electrical and Electronics degree from İTU in 1979 graduated from UCSB Computer Science with a master’s degree in 1984 joined Mekanist and became a member of the Board of Directors after completing his corporate work life at Microsoft as an instructor and advisor in the field of CRM. Upon acquisition of the company by Zomato in 2015, he started taking a more active role in fields of entrepreneurship and investment. He has been involved in many projects as founder, mentor and investor and he is still working in entrepreneurship field without a break. Business enterprises he has been a part of: Scorp, Flightrecorder, Ideasoft, Blesh, Temizlikyolda, Bionluk, Kolay Randevu, Connected2me, Erasmusinn and English Ninjas.

Kaan Akin graduated from Sabancı University and has a degree Mechatronics Engineering and Mathematics. After his graduation, he worked at multinational technology companies such as Boatbookings.com and Yandex, a multinational fast-moving consumer company like PepsiCo, and investment funds like Arkony. Kaan Akin, who mainly worked in fields of Product Management, Innovation, Marketing and Strategy, is one of the founding partners of TRAngels Angel Investment Network and is also the founder of the company with the trade name Hackquarters Girişim Hızlandırma ve Kurumsal İnovasyon. He has touched over 100 business enterprises so far thanks to programs made by him and continues his career as the shareholder in more than 10 companies. In addition, he continues to render consulting services and act as the country representative at global technology companies such as SXSW, Seedstars, International Accelerator and Founder Institute.

Seçkin has been working, for over 4.5 years, at Google Turkey, with the largest advertising firms in the retail and telecom sectors. As the Sector Manager, he plays an active role in digital marketing transformation of advertisers with different needs in different areas such as e-commerce firms, omni-channel retailers and telecom operators.

After starting his career as Siemens as the project manager, Seçkin continued his career at Accenture as the management advisor and stepped into e-commerce sector in 2011 with Groupon Turkey.

After graduating from the Department of Industrial Engineering at Bilkent University, Seçkin completed his MBA studies at Boğaziçi University.

Born in 1980, Istanbul, Soner Demiray is a graduate of Galatasaray High School and GSÜ Computer Engineering. After working at many large scale data projects at Deloitte and McKinsey, after Datascope, he developed and commercialized ERP / CRM / Retail software for retail clothing companies with the company started by him in 2004. Demiray is managing partner of Bunsar Bilişim, founded by him in 2012 within the structure of İTÜ Teknokent, which develops solutions using artificial intelligence and image processing technologies for retail. The visual product search and suggestion engine solution of Bunsar, chosen by Microsoft in 2017 as the best cloud-based software development company of the year, is used by Hopi.

Kaan Camgoz graduated from Bilkent University Business Administration (BA) and holds a Master’s Degree (MSc) in Strategic Marketing from Maastricht University, School of Business & Economics.

In 2010, he started to work in marketing for Unilever Turkey. With 8 years’ experience, he worked in numerous brands like Algida, Lipton, Magnum in brand marketing and management roles. Between 2015-2016 he worked in Unilever China as Ice Cream Category Marketing Manager. In 2017, after his role as Senior Brand Manager in Lipton, he joined to Facebook London, as FMCG & Retail Vertical Lead.

Kaan also voluntarily work for One Young World, as young leading ambassador and in Mobile Marketing Association as the marketing committee leader.