Alumni Achievements

After graduating in 2015 from the Undergraduate Business Administration Program at Özyeğin University with scholarship, I joined the Sales Department at Coca-Cola Turkey where I worked for 1.5 years, only to come to the conclusion that I did not, in fact, want to be part of corporate life. That’s how I decided to start my own business to pursue my dreams. I resigned from Coca-Cola and entered into a phase in which I started a set of brainstorming sessions with Can Fıçıcı, a fellow graduate of our University and the owner of Pizza Hot Slice, a student business in operation on campus. During that phase, my path crossed with Atahan Yersel, my current partner. With Atahan Yersel’s experience in the food sector and know-how from his previous brands blended with my dynamism, our joint-venture Lokmata was laid on strong foundations, opening the doors of its first branch in Akaretler, Beşiktaş on May 26, 2018.  We turned our traditional “lokma”- fried sweet dough covered in a simple syrup- into a post-modern desert with a brand new interpretation.  In the first week of our launch, 9gag, which boasts 45 million followers, shared our Lokmata, and Insider, a major global food & drink account, posted a video about us. We were also covered by the national newspapers Milliyet, Sabah, and Hürriyet. In fact, Hürriyet’s headline was “16 Tastes Worth Waiting in a Queue for”. Soon, Lokmata was heard and loved by many, with its second and third branches launched in Kadıköy and Çengelköy, respectively. At the same time, we also have an RV which we showcase at special events and festivals.

My name is Muratcan Çiçek. I am a member of the Class of 2017 at Özyeğin University, majoring in Computer Science.  I qualified to be a “High Honor Student” in recognition of my academic achievement. It was Özyeğin University that sent me and my mom on our first international trip and offered me my first professional experience by recruiting me to its application development team. Not only did OzU contribute to my personal development, but it also sent me as an exchange student to Oregon State University in the US in my junior year. In recognition of the achievements I demonstrated there and later at OzU, Google named me one of the top 9 most successful students with disabilities in Europe. I was the first person in Turkey ever bestowed with such a distinction, which was also the testimony of Özyeğin University’s world-class standards in accessibility. OzU equipped me with the state-of-the-art academic knowledge, while also providing me with all the necessary facilities to help me continue my academic life in the Silicon Valley as a PhD student. My evolution from an Istanbul-based successful engineer to a researcher based in the global hub of technology is my second transformation, and I owe it to Özyeğin University again. OzU took an equal-weight program student at an average high school under its wings, vested him with the best possible education despite his physical disability and financial limitations, and led him to join the world’s most distinguished engineering students.

Thanks to OzU, I am a good, successful athlete.

In addition to being a student, I am also a professional athlete in fencing. I can easily say that it is possible to excel in both athletics and academic pursuits at Özyeğin University. I have greatly benefited from both the academic and athletic facilities of the University over the course of four years. Last year, thanks to my University, I had the opportunity to complete my summer internship at the Credit Europe Bank in Amsterdam, which provided me with a very different experience. I garnered a new perspective and had the chance to put my theoretical knowledge into practice. I observed how I can calmly tackle the challenges I may face in the world of business. I know that all these experiences will be a great help to me in my professional life. In addition, I strive to excel in my athletic life to the best of my abilities. I attained the biggest achievements of my 13-year athletic career after I was admitted to this University, and I am continuing to do so. I won a bronze medal in fencing during the Mediterranean Games 2013 held in Mersin, Turkey, ending a 32-year hiatus for Turkey. As you all know, the Olympics is the highest degree an athlete may reach in sport. I have also recently qualified to represent my country in the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio. Thus, I will be the first Turkish athlete that has ever competed in the Olympics in fencing since 1984. This achievement is the result of team work and as you would also agree, Özyeğin University has a great role in this achievement. In short, Özyeğin University offers you endless opportunities in order to seize success. When I look back, I see how many beautiful memories I have collected.

What I’ve always had in mind since my childhood was to start my own business. In my family, no one has ever owned a business before.  My father had always encouraged me to start mine, though. When I learned that Hüsnü Özyeğin, a graduate of Robert College and Harvard University and one of the best entrepreneurs in Turkey, founded a university, I decided to attend Özyeğin University, for I believed that Hüsnü Özyeğin could not establish a bad university even if he wanted to. During my studies at Özyeğin University, I took up hourly, daily, and weekly jobs in event management companies to develop my networking and management skills. Frequent chats and dining hall lunches Mr. Hüsnü Özyeğin had with students, and the trip to London we had with him and fellow fresh graduates also helped me expand my vision. After graduation, I had two options before me: Either do my master’s degree at Tilburg University (the Netherlands) with scholarship, or accept the job offer of the shoe factory where I previously interned. As what I had always had in my mind was to start my own business, I accepted the job offer. SMEs have always attracted me, for people who graduated from good universities like us can make a difference in a short period of time and carry their business into another sector. After two years, I thought it was time to do something for myself, and I chose the food sector. I developed a business plan with fellow Özyeğin graduates to start a pizza business. I launched my first branch at my alma mater in October 2016 under the auspices of our Rector Esra Gençtürk. Now, I manage a business with 4 branches and 20 employees. As the second leg of my serial entrepreneurship plan, we have also launched a website called “1al1ode.com” where we sell automobile accessories. Over the coming years, we plan to take our company to greater heights, and start exporting.

I studied at Özyeğin University with scholarship, majoring in Business Administration. Throughout my studies, I saw that the spirit of entrepreneurship Özyeğin continuously strives to instill in each of us was in fact a source of excitement for me. My dad is a third-generation industrialist, and my mom is a third-generation academician. Both my twin and I had always been subject to my mom’s and dad’s attempts to get into our heads and convince us to follow in their footsteps. My internships were spent either with my mom, listening to her Ph.D. students discussing their dissertation topics with her, or grading  exam papers together, or with my father, carrying goods with forklifts or manufacturing with the machines in the factory. I guess, my twin’s and my dream to start our own business dates back to the early years of university. Our keen interest in the food sector, and our insatiable fondness for gourmet tastes back then actually gave us the first signs that would lead us to where we are today. My twin and I decided to start an ice-cream business which would treasure local production and respond to our quest for new tastes. To achieve our goal, we received  training from the world’s leading gourmands. We invited Italian ice-cream chefs to Istanbul to introduce them to local tastes, and eventually, we succeeded in producing a special gelato. We source our fresh milk from a pool of cows which have not fallen sick for three generations, we purchase our fresh fruits directly from local producers, and we prepare our products without any additives. In our business, we put health, taste, and quality first.  Our aim is to transform our business into a global brand, and while doing that, be able to serve as a facilitator to help our local agriculture and local brands open up to the world. Özyeğin is definitely the right place to be to start writing your own entrepreneurship story.

My name is Barkın Laçin Özdemir. With the English I learned in the Preparatory English Program, I had the opportunity to embark on a European trip in my first year at OzU. While pursuing my studies, I started to work in different lines of business. I was the only student invited from Turkey to Expo 2015 in Milan, Italy. Then, I joined the Amsterdam Project as part of a special program offered by my University. In 2016, I gave a short break to my university adventure and moved to New York for a project I had decided to take up. After my New York experience, I decided that I need to get a taste of real life out there. That’s how I embarked on a 7-month trip to South America, which I combined with numerous social responsibility projects, from teaching English at disadvantaged schools to working in orphanages. Having experienced the nomad life for 1.5 years, I set foot on Antarctica, the last continent I had not been to, through crowdsourcing. Thus, I qualified to be the youngest Turk that has set foot on every continent. After I got back and resumed my studies, I finished my junior year. Then, I won an entrepreneurship scholarship offered by the European Commission, and relocated to London for 5 months. Meanwhile, in recognition of my Antarctica project through which I intended to address the global warming problem and encourage the Turkish youth to create their own opportunities to make their travelling dreams come true, I was invited as the only Turkish student from Turkey to a US-based society for select people who have made a large social impact in the digital world. In 2019, I graduated from Özyeğin University. Following this life-changing experience, I am currently taking up an active role in global projects in a wide array of fields to further my career.

I graduated from the Department of Business Administration at Özyeğin University in June 2015. Before I even graduated, I found my dream job, and started to work as a Consultant for IBM. Taking into account my fields of interest and my career goals, I decided to specialize in customer experience strategy. I provided support to customers in completing the digital transformation of their businesses, creating a culture of design in their organizations, and developing new products and services to offer a better customer experience. Over the 4 years I worked for IBM, I saw that for an innovation to be successful, it needs to meet the market needs, and be profitable and technically feasible.  In order to bring that holistic approach to my work, I decided to do a master’s degree that blends design, management, and engineering. That’s how I started the master’s program in Integrated Design & Management at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in September 2019.  

Until my graduation from Özyeğin University in 2018, I worked in different lines of business and had the opportunity to experience corporate life first hand. When I graduated from the Department of Business Administration, I took a “gap year” to think about what I do not want as a career, what life wants from me, and what would make me happy in the future. Eventually, I decided to work in the field of sustainable development as it is both focused on environment and humanity, and also closely related to our future. Although I had no accumulation of knowledge in that area, I tried to develop my proficiency by receiving online training in subjects such as environmental sciences, environmental protection, and global climate change. Once I finished these courses, to put my theoretical knowledge into use on the field, I joined a volunteering project run by LCMO (Land and Conservation Mentor’s Organization), a grassroots non-governmental and non-profit organization which partners with National Geographic to run a series of projects in Tanzania, Africa.  This was by far the most useful and illuminating experience I have ever had in my life during which I touched people’s lives and experienced different cultures. After the project, I made up my mind to work in the field of sustainable development. I returned to Turkey and started a 6-month internship at the United Nations’ Istanbul office. During this time, upon the invitation of Özyeğin University’s Sustainable Development Platform, we held the 6th edition of the Sustainability Talks, and I had the opportunity to share my Tanzania experiences with a large audience. In addition to the presentations, our Rector Prof. Dr. Esra Gençtürk and I also launched the exhibition “Environment and Human”, showcasing the photos I took during the project in Tanzania. Now, I am waiting to be admitted to the master’s program in Environmental Studies and Sustainability Science at Lund University.