Shining Star of Vedder Price

From an early age, Ayşe was driven. Growing up in Adana, Turkey, she attended Hacettepe University for two years, focusing on American Studies, before deciding to move to the U.S. Her father, the Assistant General Manager for the Adana International Airport, started teaching Ayşe English at a young age, and she continued to study it through her high school years. Even with those years spent studying the language and customs, starting a new life in a foreign culture, where the primary language is your second language, is an amazing challenge. Ayşe never let that get in the way of creating her own success story because she was determined to be successful.   

Ayşe began her journey working three jobs while attending a community college near Sacramento, California before transferring to Sacramento State University. Her hard work paid off when she graduated cum laude in only two and a half years. “I wanted the degree to be able to provide for myself,” Ayşe explained. “I knew that without a good education, I wouldn’t be able to do the things I wanted to do, like somehow make a positive difference in society.”

Never one to back down from a challenge, Ayşe decided to pursue a law degree from the University of California Davis School of Law, where she was a member of the university’s Turkish Students Association, comprised mainly of Ph.D. and postdoctoral students. Upon graduation, Ayşe was awarded a Diversity Fellowship by the Sacramento County Bar Association, which helped her obtain her first litigation job in Sacramento..  

Ayşe later moved to San Francisco and joined a large international law firm working on large class action defense cases, reporting primarily to Heather Sager, who would become her mentor and biggest champion. “Heather and I make a great team—she is one of the very best in the field—not only because she knows the law, but because she is efficient, cost-conscious and practical, and she understands the decision-making process for businesses.”

Following her mentor to the San Francisco office of Vedder Price, Ayşe is now an Associate in the firm’s Labor and Employment practice group. The ability to pitch to larger clients and the depth and breadth of the firm’s practice groups were major factors in her decision to join Vedder Price. Recently, Ayşe had the opportunity to pitch to a very prominent Turkish firm, in line with her personal objective of serving Turkish companies doing business in the U.S. and American companies doing business in Turkey. “I want to serve businesses with a Turkish connection because I want to get in touch with my past, my roots,” Ayşe commented. The firm’s extremely well-regarded practices in Global Transportation Finance, Labor and Employment, and Government Contracts and Investigations provide a unique set of services that are useful to companies based outside of the U.S. Referencing the firm’s nearly 300 lawyers, a history dating back to 1952 and offices located in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Washington D.C., San Francisco and London, Ayşe observed, “Vedder Price has the means to allow me to serve international businesses.  Many companies–especially foreign ones–just don’t know about the intricacies of our laws.  We are here to help enable those companies to focus on their business operations, while we focus on risk management.”