LEAD Network Breakfast Session at the Consumer Goods Forum 59th Future Leaders Congress – “Growth at the Crossroads”
12th to 14th  October 2014, Istanbul, Turkey

  • Moderated by Fatma Tek, UNILEVER, The Netherlands
  • Better In Business: 3 Short Stories On Success by Hande Demirel, Editor, Presenter, Bloomberg HT, Turkey
  • The Importance of Networking by Yeşim Güra, General Manager, Danone Hayat Icecek ve Gıda, Turkey

The 59th Consumer Goods Forum Future Leaders Congress “Growth at the Crossroads”, in Istanbul on 12 to 14 October, brought together young executives in the retail and consumer goods sector coming from 33 countries. At the first morning of the event, LEAD hosted a dynamic Breakfast Session dedicated to the topic of “The Power of Networking”. Session Moderator Fatma Tek of Unilever opened the session with an overview of LEAD. Guest speaker Hande Demirel, Editor, Presenter, Bloomberg HT, Turkey, followed by sharing the stories of three successful Turkish business women:

  • Emel Aksoy Gündemir, a 36 year old entrepreneur from İzmir who during middle school years contributed her family income by making nets in fish farms by hand. Today her company has grown to include five factories that are produce nets exported around the world.
  • Arzuhan Doğan Yalçındağ, Chairwoman and Chief Executive Officer of Dogan TV in Turkey, and Founding Director of the Women’s Initiative for Turkey.
  • Ümran Beba, SVP and Chief Human Resources officer, PepsiCo AMEA, who manages a global portfolio of food and beverage brands. In her region, she helped develop WaterHope, a collaborative social enterprise that aims to bring clean drinking water to one million Filipinos by 2015.

Yeşim Güra, General Manager, Danone Hayat Icecek ve Gıda, Turkey, shared her personal story of how she has used the power of networking to reach her goals. She recommends to build networking skills by constantly leaning in and improving your effectiveness. Like building muscles through regular exercise, you can also build networking skills if you keep working at it.