Autobiography

I was born in Corlu, Turkey in 1986. My father was a Maths teacher and mother was a government official of the Ministry of National Education. After my father complete his assignment we moved back in to our home city, Istanbul when I was 6.

I started my education in Halil Vedat Fıratlı Primary School where I had my first English lessons in the 3rd class. In these years computers attracted my attention. I mostly liked playing games but as i started elementary school i also started to write, simple HTML websites at Notepad. I was also learning many different computer programmes such as MS Office and FrontPage all by myself.

After graduating from elementary school I started Bahcesehir Ataturk High School that have extended English courses. When I was in high school I was still interested in computers and I expanded my area of knowledge in terms of hardware and software. I started to learn more complicated and professional softwares such as; Dreamweaver, Adobe Flash, Swish, Visual Basic, Photoshop, Corel Draw, Sound Forge and Adobe Premiere. I also kept playing more complex computer games. Adventure and role playing games were my favorite genres which usually have a nice complicated scenarios and requires logic and problem solving ability. Due to complicated scenerios of the games, English became a part of my daily life. It was not just a course for me anymore. I also formed a rock band with 3 other friends in the high school years when i first started to play drums. With my band I  performed 2 concerts in the last year of High School (one in Istanbul University and other in Bahcesehir Spring Festival). I was quite active in High School since computers and music were not my only hobbies. With my best friend I took a course on Short Movie Directorship but sadly we couldn’t complete our movie and enter the competition of Istanbul Erkek High School due to technical and financial reasons. My grades were not that bad either I graduated with a 4.07 out of 5 average. In sum, all the activities and recent education steps added me some abilities and made me discover my tendencies. Even though I liked the computers I didn’t want to be an engineer, I realized that I must have a job where I can use my creativity and social skills…

So after High School I chose Faculty of Economics and Administrative Sciences of Anadolu University where I studied Economics In English. In University, besides my previous hobbies, I also leaned on visuals; I started photography, worked on photo manipulation, video editing and design. I built a photography website; ermany.net, record, directed and edited a 22 minutes short movie with a crew of 11 beloved friends. I participated in photography, photo manipulation contests, designed posters for clubs of the University. All of these activities helped me gain experience on both static (photo, poster, billboard etc.) and dynamic (videos, movies…) visuals. At the end of the 2nd year I went to USA for 4 months. After coming back to Turkey, I invested my small savings on stock market in order to understand the dynamics of stock market. Even though I tried to learn to manage an investment portfolio, I knew that being an finance specialist was not the right job for me. I focused on Marketing after 2nd grade, which I really enjoy and where I can reach my full potential. I prefered marketing classes in elective courses and helped my frieds who were studying advertisement and public relations in their projects to learn as much as I can about marketing. 2 marketing camps helped me a lot to understand the past, today also the dynamics of marketing which are “Marketing @ Campus” of Anadolu University and Camp’08 of Koc University. Only 80 applications were accepted to Kamp ’08 in whole of Turkey after the election made by Kariyer.net’s HR specialists. To be selected for the camp was a great opportunity for me, in both organizations I found chance to listen to, most successful marketing professionals in Turkey and learn from their experiences. Some of the names are; Mustafa İçil (Google), Levent Soygür (Coca-Cola Co.), Mustafa Seçkin (Unilever) , Alpay Alptekin (P&G) , Yalçın Lokmanhekim (Opet), Rıdvan Uçar (Aygaz) , Özlem Akbayır (Avea), Alper Kul (Pepsi) and many others as valuable as the ones I counted. I was getting more excited as I learn more about marketing. I started to read Seth Godin who is a very successful and innovative marketing writer. The idea of  “how marketing and a matketeer should be” became more clear after I read all the books of Seth Godin. I was also reading other writers to get different perspectives.

I graduated form University in 2008 and done military service which is mandatory for every male Turkish citizen in 2009.

For the future, I want to start my career as a marketing professional in a multi-national company (primarily IT companies) and graduate from an MBA program after 3-5 years of business experience.