In the disruptive AI transformation, those who chart the course together pull ahead.

Sencer Kutluğ

A career spanning engineering, commercial leadership and the CEO seat. Over 11 years at Google Türkiye he built four industry verticals; at Bilyoner he led an organization of more than 200 people through an operational transformation and grew market share by 25 percent. A graduate of Boğaziçi, Ohio State and INSEAD, he now focuses on where lasting value is created in enterprise AI.

• Strategy & Decision-Making
• Pilot to Production
• Business Model

Günce Önür

General Partner at Startup Wise Guys, one of Eastern Europe's leading early-stage funds; she has invested in more than 160 startups. She managed investor networks and portfolios at Keiretsu Forum and StartersHub. Through The New Rising she runs masterclass and VC Academy programs for entrepreneurs and aspiring investors; she is a graduate of 500 Global and Stanford's VC Unlocked program.

• Entrepreneurship & Product
• Finance & Valuation

Nilüfer Aktaş

More than 25 years of international banking experience at Garanti, BNP Paribas/TEB and Akbank in private banking, business development and sustainability strategy. A graduate of the Stanford GSB Women Entrepreneurs Program, she was named one of the Responsible Global Leaders by the BMW Foundation in 2021. Through Impact Maze she advises organizations on strategy for resilient, inclusive and digital business models.

• Ethics & Trust
• Frontier Organization
• Finance & Valuation

Berfu Kaya

A strategy and negotiation expert with a legal background, she trained in international negotiation and commercial diplomacy at Harvard Business School and London Business School. For more than 20 years she has negotiated contracts worth hundreds of millions of dollars in the energy, mining and infrastructure sectors; she has advised more than 100 organizations on strategy and trained more than 2,000 professionals in negotiation.

• Commercial Leadership
• Strategy & Decision-Making

Ege Nasuhoğlu

Throughout his career, Ege Nasuhoğlu has had the opportunity to look at companies from both an advisor's and an investor's perspective. After working in financial audit, due diligence and M&A at PwC and Deloitte, he moved to the investor side at Collective Spark, taking part in fund management, investment evaluation and deal execution. Today, at BE Advise, the firm he founded, he advises entrepreneurs and companies on financial strategy, valuation, investment and financing readiness, fundraising and M&A.

• Finance & Valuation
• Entrepreneurship & Product

Esin Özkan

More than 15 years of experience in data analytics, business intelligence and data science; she has led dozens of end-to-end projects from FMCG to aviation and from telecom to automotive, and is a certified IBCS trainer. She founded 4e Academy to carry organizations' teams into the age of data and AI; she runs the Turkish AI Initiative's Academy programs and delivers strategy training for C-level executives on integrating data and AI into decision-making.

• Pilot to Production
• Strategy & Decision-Making

Bahar Serçin Halefoğlu

She works on AI governance, policy and diplomacy and is an ISO 42001 AI Lead Auditor. She is Deputy Secretary General of the AI Policy Association and Vice Chair of its AI Diplomacy Commission, and a policy advisor on digital public infrastructure at GovStack. She previously served as a data and business intelligence manager at L'Oréal and Bayer, and writes about AI for Harvard Business Review Türkiye and Inc. Türkiye.

• Governance & Geopolitics
• Ethics & Trust

Kerim Alain Bertrand

A senior executive focused on international growth and transformation, with more than 20 years of P&L leadership experience in B2B SaaS and technology companies. Across the US, EMEA and APAC markets he has held roles from country manager to CEO at companies such as ISI Emerging Markets, UBM, REIDIN, SmartMessage and VeriPark, proving himself in building businesses from scratch, entering new markets, channel development and M&A. He has built high-performing teams across a geography stretching from Türkiye, the Middle East and Southeast Asia to North America.

• International Growth
• Transformation

Gezin Cankat Acarbay

More than 25 years of experience in human resources and organizational development: corporate academy and leadership development at Turkcell, and leading Red Academy and serving as HR Business Partner for technology teams at Vodafone. As an ORSC and STC team coach, she has run team and systems coaching workshops with more than 550 teams and over 5,000 people. Through Gezinlab, which she founded in 2020, she accompanies organizations on the human and cultural side of leadership and transformation in the age of AI.

• Frontier Organization
• Leadership & Culture
• Transformation

Onat Vural

After his master's degree at Parsons in New York, he has spent more than 10 years working on innovation strategy, product design, and designing and teaching intrapreneurship programs. With a background in consulting, he has run his own business since 2020. He has worked with Akbank, Abdi İbrahim, Arçelik, GarantiBBVA, Sabancı Holding, Reckitt and Tat, as well as Alibaba in China and Roshn in Saudi Arabia. Today he focuses on 'AI First' corporate and organizational strategies and on training in the effective use of AI tools.

• AI First Organizations
• AI
• Innovation

Defne İncekara

Over a career of more than 25 years at Andersen, PwC, Vodafone, IBM and Ericsson, she led big data, analytics and digital transformation projects. Today she channels this experience into helping organizations get real results with AI; she has worked with more than 5,700 participants across 97 organizations. In her workshops, based on the Harvard Business School case method, participants solve a real problem from their own workflow during the session.

• AI
• Data & Analytics
• Transformation