Meral Kurdaş | A CEO’s lessons on Racing Cars, Flying Planes and Finding Meaning

Meral Kurdaş is the Group President HR at Sabancı Holding. Prior that she was the CEO of AvivaSA Emeklilik ve Hayat AS. She has served as a member of AvivaSA’s Board of Directors since May 2002 and has served as the General Manager of AvivaSA since the merger of AK Emeklilik A.¸S. and Aviva Hayat ve Emeklilik A.¸S. in 2007. Meral began her career at Interbank A.¸S. in 1985, then served at Garanti Investment Bank as the Executive Vice President responsible for marketing, sales and private banking and from 1997 to 2002 she served as the head of the corporate marketing department at Yapı Kredi Bank. In 2002, Meral transferred to the Sabancı group as the General Manager of Ak Emeklilik A.S. Meral was the head of the Pension Monitoring Center between 2010 and 2011. She has also served as a lecturer in sales marketing, private pension and life insurance at the School of Banking and Insurance at Marmara University. She is currently a member of TUSIAD, DEIK, YASED and WCD as a co-chair. Meral graduated from Department of Business Administration at Bogazici University, the Executive MBA program at the Business School of Manchester, University of Wales, and the Executive MIS program at Bogazici University.