OUR ADVISOR
He graduated from Dokuz Eylül University, Department of Economics, Department of Economics in 1984. Between 1986-2010, he worked at the Central Bank of the Republic of Turkey and BRSA. He received his master’s degree from Loughborough University of Technology and PhD from Exeter University. He gave graduate courses at METU Institute of Applied Mathematics, Department of Financial Mathematics.
He took part in meetings organised by international organisations as a participant, speaker and trainer (IMF, World Bank, OECD and Financial Stability Institute, BIS, Basel). In 2010, he started to work full-time at Izmir University of Economics, Faculty of Business Administration, Department of International Trade and Finance. He taught Risk Management, Banking and Financial Institutions, Investment Analysis and Portfolio Management, Financial Econometrics. For the last three years, he has been lecturing on Global Trade Strategies and Financial Technologies.
Küçüközmen, who is the Chief Economist of BASİFED, has been working as an academic consultant within the framework of the TOBB programme since 2017. Küçüközmen is a member of the AIPA Advisory Board and continues to work on China’s Belt and Road Initiative, central bank digital currencies, the use of artificial intelligence in finance and green finance.
OUR ADVISOR
Ali Karabey has spent his career focusing on technology and communications investments. After graduating from the University of Michigan in 1999, he joined Arthur Andersen in New York. There, he managed middle-market transactions in technology, media and telecommunications. In 2002, he joined Morgan Stanley Capital International where he led the North American and European finance teams. From 2007 to 2008, he spent a year at Deutsche Bank, where he was part of the bank’s core investment team. In 2008 he shifted his focus to the Middle East, where he had the opportunity to work on helping companies scale. He worked with the Turkish Government and private sector on finance and private equity projects.
In addition to co-founding 212, Ali serves on the boards of Avatao, App Samurai, Fazla Gıda, Insider, Metrobi, Solvoyo and SmartMessage.
Ali is also on the Advisory Board of Endeavour and is a member of the Istanbul branch of the Entrepreneurs Association.
OUR ADVISOR
26 years of entrepreneurship; diverse technology background; imaginer; doer; mentor of many start-ups. Demet is the Chairperson of FINTR (Financial Innovation and Technologies Association) a recently launched non-profit to strengthen the fintech practice in Turkiye. She is also Managing Director and Co-Founder of KOOPHub, a diverse and independent community enabler in financial innovation. Previously, she assumed executive, advisory and entrepreneurial roles in telco industry with a focus on technology and innovation.
She was one of the founders of Turkiye’s first telecom magazine that was published for 20 years upon its debut in 1995. She became engaged in fintech once she led a team in launching the Turkiye’s first prepaid card in 2005. She has taken part in many other firstof-its-kinds gigs in the country including a calling card operator, a co-working space as well as a fashion show of wearable technologies alongside support of a global chip maker. She is an Electronics Engineer by education from Istanbul Technical University.
OUR ADVISOR
He is a 25 year seasoned Fintech/Blockchain executive leading the Global Sales Team at Fordefi since 2022. Currently scaling and expanding a first class seed round startup to over $1M in revenue in the first year, with previous experience in companies like Mastercard, Morgan Stanley, FIserv, Curv and Yodlee. He began his career in Blockchain infrastructure in 2021 working for Curv, the first institutional MPC infrastructure company, until Curv was acquired by Paypal.
He is also an avid crypto investor and fan who has personally been involved in the space since 2016.
OUR ADVISOR
He joined the PayPal in 2012 as part of the Merchant Services team, later started to lead the Middle East and North Africa in 2016. He recently moved to his current role responsible for PayPal’s Sales and Market Development efforts in 81 markets across Middle East and Africa with a large reservoir of untapped online buyers.
Prior to joining PayPal, Emrah co-founded Gourmet Marketing, an online marketing agency in New York, NY. Served as Branch Manager at American International Group, leading the largest AIG branch in the Tri-state area for 5 years and prior to that worked for J.P. Morgan Chase.
Emrah has a BS and a BA in Business Management and Economics from SUNY at Stony Brook.
OUR ADVISOR
He served as an officer in the Turkish Armed Forces for many years. During this period, he worked as an information gathering and analysis expert at NATO International Headquarters. In the private sector, he managed projects in the field of information technology data protection at EY Turkiye and SabancıDx. He is a member of ISACA Istanbul and Cloud Security Alliance (CSA) Turkiye Board of Directors. He is involved in the development of the framework for risk management in the global Blockchain Security Governance working group of CSA.
He also established the Blockchain GRC Working Group within CSA Turkiye and carries out studies to transfer the know-how in the global environment to our country.
He provides digital trust-oriented training and consultancy services within the Databulls community, of which he is one of the founders. He also works as Strategy and Business Development Leader at Averest Training and Consultancy.
He has been the Risk and IT Compliance Director of a large Blockchain technology company operating in Turkiye.
