Derya Taşkın, a Turkish businesswoman living in New Jersey, was appointed to the post of deputy mayor in Paterson, a city where a large Muslim population lives. Paterson Mayor Jose Torres announced the appointment of Taşkın to the largely ceremonial post, saying he was confident it would provide a better link between City Hall and ethnic and religious communities in the city of 146,700 people, where at least 30,000 Muslims live. Taşkın is from a Turkish community consisting mainly of migrants from Turkey's Black Sea region and served as president of the Paterson Turkish American Society association. She was appointed as the Commissioner of the Library and Museum Board for Paterson by the mayor in 2010.

Wall Street would seem like an unlikely career choice for a young woman whose parents are sculptors and who put off buying a car so she could acquire her first piece of art. But after college, Ceylan Ecer started at Goldman Sachs, looking for a different lifestyle than that of her family of artists and architects. Yet she could run only so far: as an associate at Goldman Sachs, she found herself advising the bank's partners on their personal art collections. She quickly built up a following and finally left Wall Street to work full-time as an art advisor. "I went from being 'the art girl in finance' to being 'the Goldman girl in the art world,'" she says.

Led by Gizem Salcigil White, this all-volunteer, non-profit project has decorated a food truck with images of Turkey and is traveling to Washington D.C.; Baltimore, Maryland; New York City; New Haven, Connecticut; and Boston, Massachusetts to share free Turkish coffee with Americans in order to facilitate ``coffee conversations'' between Turkish and American people.

Solita Marcelli serves as Global Head of Fixed Income, Currencies & Commodities (FICC) for Global Wealth Management at J.P. Morgan. In this role, she leads the development of FICC investment solutions, including cash trading, derivatives, structured notes and customized managed offerings for high net-worth individuals.  With a team of over 110 investment professionals serving private clients in the U.S., Latin America, Asia, Europe, Middle East & Africa, the FICC business represents over $160 billion in total client assets. In addition to creating innovative discretionary and advisory solutions, Marcelli’s team is responsible for advising private clients on the implementation of  FICC strategies within the context of their overall investment portfolios.