NILAY ATESOGULLARI

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Born in Göksun, Kahramanmaraş in 1981, Nilay Atesoğulları received her undergraduate education at Ankara and Toulon Universities, and completed her International Relations degree in France, Germany, and Italy at the European Institute (Institute of European and International Studies CIFE) in three languages: English, French, and German. At the end of her training, she received a postgraduate diploma in Political Science.

 

She began her career in Geneva at the UN High Commissioner for Refugees and continued in the Foreign Relations Department of the Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality. In 2010, she founded the Ekotek Environmental Systems company in Istanbul, pioneering Ecological Entrepreneurship. She works with national and international municipalities on environmental investments.

 

Between 2010-2016, she participated in "Waste Management and Recycling" technical tours to Portugal, France, and Spain, organized for municipalities from Turkey in order to catch up with the latest technologies in the field and to support the development of locally sustainable environments.
 

In 2015, she was nominated as an "Innovative Female Entrepreneur" by TÜBİTAK MARTEK and KADEM, and in 2016, she was named one of the "Future Mediterranean Women" by the Paris Academy of Politics (Paris Science Po), receiving "Gender Equality" training at the same institution.

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For 13 years, she has worked with ministries, municipalities, and other public institutions to support rural development, especially in Istanbul, Ankara, and the Çukurova region, in the field of regional development strategies, ecological cities, and international relations.

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In 2017 and in 2018, she ran for president of Adana Demirspor Club for two terms.

 

She is the leader of the "Hope in Youth" Solidarity Movement, producing projects to support the social development of rural children and youth, such as "Digital Children's Assembly," "My First Cinema Ticket," "Library in the Village," "Art and Volunteer Teacher in the Village."

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She participated in the work of the Union for the Mediterranean (AİB), an intergovernmental regional organization aimed at strengthening cooperation in the Mediterranean. She received the first prize in the "Preventing Unemployment in Palestine in Public, University and Industry Cooperation" project, which she prepared jointly with participants from Portugal, Egypt, Palestine, and Turkey.

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After the signing of the Paris Climate Agreement, she founded Eco Group Turkey, bringing together the Clean Energy Sector to accelerate the "green transformation" and the "sustainable city management" understanding in Turkey.

On November 10, 2020, she founded and is leading the Anatolian Development Cooperative to support cooperatives and women's entrepreneurship in Turkey with the aim of continuing from where she left off.

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She speaks Turkish, English and French and

Believes in the 'healing power of love' and the 'beauty of solidarity' for a more livable world.

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