"Founders of succesful businesses, executives, Presidents, CEOs, and General Managers... Gilan, Vocelli Pizza, Unique Settings of New York, Benchmark, Sanli Pastore & Hill, Askew Industrial Corp., Luca Luca, Inseco, Rapid Conn, CAO, Telenity, Bicom, and many other success stories... "
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"From Dallas to Chicago, from New York to Washington, D.C., in every corner of the U.S., Turkish women successfully stand in the forefront with their success in business and professional life, and academics. Here are the Turkish women and their success stories."
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Nine senior Turkish-American executives who have worked in the hotel industry in New York were brought together by TURKOFAMERICA Magazine. For the first time, the Turkish executives, who have served at the top of New York's leading venues such as St Regis, Peninsula, Ritz Carlton, The Knickerbocker, Hudson, Roger Smith and Denihan Group, have gotten together.
Many of the known representatives of New York’s real estate sector get together every month. With this meeting, over 500 members of the sector, ranging from entrepreanuers owning investments worth of billions of dollars and agencies selling property to bankers providing financial support and property marketers, get a chance to improve their business relations and have new customers. And, the person who has managed to bring together the giants of New York’s real estate sector is a Turkish entrapreneur, Selman Yalçın. Yalçın has a grasp of the sector to an extend where he knows each of over 500 guests joining the meeting in person. People meeting each other at this meeting first ask each other, ‘How do you know Selman?’
One of the most persistent names among the Turkish executives in New York’s hotels is Küçük Güngör Bağ. Having been working at Roger Smith Hotel for 11 years, Bağ holds a position as the manager of the hotel. Both his father and grandfather were also hotel managers. Bağ studied hotel management in Turkey’s Bolu İzzet Baysal University. After coming to USA, he started working in Holiday Inn Wall Street in 2004. And, since 2006, he has been working as the manager of Roger Smith Hotel, which is one of Manhattan’s rare family hotels, located on Lexington Avenue between 47th and 48th streets.
The Independent Distributors of Electronics Association (IDEA) announces the election of Board Officers for the 2016-2017 term. Hande Meissner, Vice President of Operations of Nexgen Digital, Inc., was elected President. Meissner has served on the Board of Directors since 2014 and is the Vice President of Operations of NexGen Digital, Inc., an IDEA Member since 2003.
Just after taking office, President Donald Trump issued two executive orders that called for a huge shift in enforcement priorities and the hiring of thousands of federal immigration officers — striking fear among many immigrants that the administration will amass a deportation force. There are some key differences between the Obama administration's immigration policies and the new plans under Trump. We talked Ayhan Ögmen of Ogmen Law based in New York.
TurkofAmerica, first and only Turkish-American business magazine since 2002, has a new issue which has just been published. These are the subject the current issue has covered.
According to data shared by Hotel Association of New York City, established back in 1878 as one of New York’s oldest guilds, there are 280 hotels operating within the borders of New York City and only 10 of these are 5 star hotels. Mandarin Oriental, Four Seasons Hotel, Ritz-Carlton New York, The St. Regis New York, Trump International, The Plaza Hotel and The Peninsula Hotel are some of them. The five star hotels create diversity in the hospitality sector with the special services they provide to their customers. One usually needs to do a lot of search, especially in special times, such as the general assembly meetings of the UN in September, Christmas, and the New Year’s Eve, to find rooms at hotels in New York, which is a busy city that was visited by 58.3 million tourists in 2014, by 59.7 million in 2015, and 60.3 million in 2016. It is estimated that the contribution of tourists to the economy of New York is around 70 billion dollars. And, the average price for a one night stay at five star hotels is 480 dollars.
The annual meeting of the Elections Committee of Democratic Party, which brings together the key figures of the party every year for discussion of their party’s future strategies, was once again held at the Martha’s Vineyard Island in Massachusetts. The camp that includes activities such as boat trips, dinners, and breakfasts, is known as a meeting where important decisions are made in terms of providing support for those prospective senators.The island that has been visited by 9 former US presidents, including Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, has a special importance. It is also one of the places definitely stopped by presidential candidates for the purpose of collecting donations during presidential election campaigns.
It was the year 1968 when Dr. Yalçın Ayaslı came to Boston to get his Ph.D. at the globally famous Massachusetts Institute of Technology-MIT, after having graduated from the Middle East Technical University-METU in Ankara. When he told the taxi driver that he was a Turk, he encountered, for the first time, claims about the Armenian genocide allegedly carried out by the Ottoman Empire back in 1915. Ayaslı took it upon himself to fight these claims first as a student and later as a professional. He used to work closely with then Honorary Consul General of Turkey, Orhan Gündüz. When Orhan Gündüz was murdered by Armenian terrorists in Somerville, Massachusetts on May 4, 1982, Ayaslı honoured his legacy by naming his son after him. Turk of America magazine selected Dr.Yalcin Ayaslı among one of the 50 Most Influential Turkish-Americans and summarized the reason for the award as defining him as ‘one of the people who changed the unfortunate fate of Turks in America in terms of political and cultural aspects’.
By Cemil Özyurt - Ümran Beba is the senior vice president and CHRO, PepsiCo, for Global Human Capital Management, Services and Operations. Based in Purchase, NY, she oversees Human Capital Management Strategy and Workforce Analytics, Enterprise Organization Development, Change Management, Organization Design, the Labor Center of Expertise, HR Operations, Core Services and Human Capital Management Communications. Prior to this role, she was based in Dubai serving as the SVP and CHRO for PepsiCo Asia, Middle East and North Africa, which spans some 40 countries and 50 nationalities in its workforce. Beba has held a wide range of roles since joining the company in 1994. From 2013 to 2015, she was the president of PepsiCo’s Asia-Pacific region, which spans some 25 markets. “Digital transformation is changing the labor market, and altering how companies think about everything from talent acquisition to learning, performance management and rewards,” says Ms. Beba, who is also a member of the World Economic Forum Global Future Council on the Future of Education, Gender and Work. “Today, business leaders must have critical data and analytics at their fingertips to allow them to make more informed decisions about everything including talent, workforce planning and staffing.” A Turkish executive with one the highest positions at PepsiCo answers questions of TURKOFAMERICA.
Tarkan V. Gürkan graduated from Bosporus University’s Mechanical Engineering Department in 1994. With the advice of one of his professors in college, he decided to study for his master’s degree in America. He got accepted to Dartmouth College and Yale University; and, he decided to attend Dartmouth. While he was studying, he worked at the school cafetaria and the security office for the schools computer rooms.
Two years in a row, the Surrey Hotel has been selected as the best hotel of New York in a readers’ survey conducted by Conde Nast Traveler magazine. The survey was taken by over 300K readers in 606 cities and the selection was done among 7394 hotels. And, the human resources director of this first place winner luxurious hotel in New York that is a part of the Denihan Hospitality Group is a Turkish professional.
By Altan Ergün * - Muhtar Kent was born in New York. His father was the Turkish Consul General at the time. After finishing high school in Turkey in 1971, he went to University of Hull where studied economics and then MBA at Cass Business School in London. Het joined the Coca-Cola Company in Atlanta in 1978 and rose through the company taking different leadership positions in US, Europe and Asia. After a stint with Turkey’s Efes Beverage Group in 1999, he returned to Coca-Cola in 2005, and become the Chief Executive Officer in 2008 and then Chairman in 2009. He is married with two kids and lives in Atlanta.
Mükemmel (Mike) Sarımsakçı founded Alterra in 2009 with one mission in mind: “to develop inspired spaces for people to live, work, and play,” the company says. Sarımsakçı is a more than 20-year real estate, development and construction industry veteran with experience in North America as well as internationally. Before forming the company, Sarimsakci was managing director of Polidev International LLC, where he was responsible for real estate development projects in the Americas. His international experience includes working as vice president in Saudi Arabia for AECOM and serving as a board member with Ibra Holding in Azarbaijan. Sarimsakci’s first job in the construction industry was with Bechtel in San Francisco, where he was a construction manager and civil engineer for massive park projects in Dubai and Euro Disney. He sits at two NGO boards: American Turkish Society and East West Institute. TURKOFAMERICA talked to Mike Sarımsakçı about his past and current projects.
