The Fifth Women's Leadership Platform summit was held in Istanbul with wide participation. In the summit which was held with the theme of “Inclusiveness: From ‘Ego’system to Ecosystem”, especially ecosystems and networks were emphasized. Implemented in cooperation of Women Entrepreneurs Association of Turkey (KAGİDER), Turkish Women's International Network (TurkishWIN) and UPS and with the support of the Women on Board Association Turkey, Women's Leadership Platform (KLP)’s fifth summit was held at Istanbul Divan Hotel on 20 February, Thursday. KAGİDER President Emine Erdem, TurkishWIN & BinYaprak Founder of Melek Pulatkonak, UPS Turkey Country Manager Burak Kilic and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) Turkey Vice President Hande Islak participated in the summit held with the theme "Inclusiveness: From ‘Ego’system to Ecosystem". Emphasis was placed on ecosystems and networks at the KLP Summit, which aims to raise awareness on this issue by ensuring that all corporate leaders work to increase women's employment and leadership in the private sector share ideas and experiences with each other. KAGİDER President Emine Erdem made the opening speech of the summit: 'KLP, is a good example of the transition to ecosystem from -ego-system'. Erdem added: "Unless women are empowered socially, are provided with equal opportunities and are involved in the economy; can we speak of what is considered sustainable for the world or economic growth. With the Women's Leadership Platform, a great ecosystem working for women leadership in the private sector has been established. Today, the theme of our summit is from ‘Ego’system to Ecosystem. The ‘egosystem’ is centrist while the ecosystem is scattered. Everything is invented and found in the egosystem, the solution can be anywhere in the ecosystem. The ecosystem is owned, closed; ecosystem is sharing, open. The egosystem is hyper-competitive, the ecosystem is hyper-collaborative. The egosystem is singular, while the ecosystem is a network. The Women's Leadership Platform is also a very good example of inclusion, with the transition from egosystem to ecosystem with stakeholders and participating companies. ”

Melek Pulatkonak 'Our goal is to bring the meetings out of Istanbul'

Speaking at the opening of the meeting, TurkishWIN and BinYaprak Founder Melek Pulatkonak said: “We invite all companies that aim to increase women's employment to invest in inclusive corporate culture in our Women's Leadership Platform ecosystem. Our target for 2020 is to move our platform meetings outside Istanbul. We are excited to acquire new stakeholders and expand our ecosystem. ”

UPS Turkey General Manager Burak Kilic stated at the meeting: " As UPS, we try to practice effective programs, especially regarding women's leadership and development. The presence of women on the board is an important issue for us. Therefore, we aim to increase the number of women leaders both in the board of directors and in the level of operations. In addition, we have implemented the Women Exporter Program for 2 years now in order to support our entrepreneur women to open their businesses to the world and to deliver their products to new markets. Just as a single-winged bird cannot fly, it is not possible for the countries where women do not contribute to the economy to grow healthy. This is a journey, we will continue to walk together for women's participation in the economy. ”

Hande Işlak: 'We have supported gender equality with an investment of more than 3 billion Euros in Turkey

"The EBRD Deputy Chairman of Turkey Hande Işlak said:" Since we started our operations in Turkey in 2009 covering many sectors, we invested over 12 billion Euros. We supported gender equality and economic inclusion in our 49 projects totaling 3 billion Euros, corresponding to a quarter of this amount. We continue to support women’s access to employment and their reach to financing, skills, employment and services in our investments in line with Strengthening Gender Equality Strategy (2016-2020) as well as Turkey Country Strategy (2019-2024) of our Bank. At the same time, it is of utmost importance to facilitate policy dialogue between public and private stakeholders by analyzing the structural obstacles to women's empowerment in all these areas and to take steps to overcome these obstacles. ”

Three panels were held

The first event of the meeting was the panel titled “Development Investments Ecosystem” which was sponsored by the EBRD. The speakers of the panel moderated by the EBRD Gender Equality Program Coordinator Özen Karaca were ILO Senior Program Manager Ebru Özberk Anli, Frankfurt School of Finance & Management Turkey Director, AKİŞ GYO IK Director, Özlem Özbatır and Balparmak R&D Director Dr. Emel Damarlı. The moderator of the panel titled “Networks That Make a Difference” organized by TurkishWIN was Melek Pulatkonak, the founder of TurkishWIN & BinYaprak.

KAGİDER Board Member Bahar Şen, the Woman on Board Association Turkey Board Member Özge Bulut, YenidenBiz Association Founder and Board Member Ayşe Güçlü Onur, AÇEV General Manager, Burcu Gündüz Maşalacı and UNDP Assistant Resident Representative Seher Alacacı Arıner joined the panel.

The third event of the summit was the "Getting to Know the Best Practices" panel organized by KAGİDER. The panel was moderated by KAGİDER Board Member Esra Bezircioğlu and the speakers were WPP Turkey & Group M Turkey Executive Board Member responsible for Human Resources, Culture and Sustainability Aysun Sayın, Zorlu Holding Corporate Communications Manager Şahika Özcan Ortaç and Borusan Holding Corporate Communications Manager Öznur Halilcikoğlu. The event ended with the speech of UPS Turkey Country Director of Labor Relations Özge Erol.

KLP's 25th event was held

In order to increase women's leadership in the private sector, the Women Leadership Platform, where the institutions shared their good practices, learned from each other and inspired, organized a total of twenty-four events formerly, four of which were summits. In these events, representatives of 125 companies shared practices and procedures in their companies, ranging from flexible work to parental support mechanisms, female employment in sales to the language of internal communication.

About Women Leadership Platform:

Women's Leadership Platform was established with the cooperation of KAGIDER that works with the primary objective of improving women's entrepreneurship and leadership in Turkey, Turkish Women’s International Network (TurkishWIN) that is a global sharing platform for all women who are the citizens of the world and with UPS that works for women to develop their leadership in the countries where it has operations.

The platform aims to raise awareness by enabling the corporate leaders that strives to promote women leadership and employment to share ideas and experiences among themselves.

The Women Leadership Platform, which held its first event in Istanbul on 26 February 2014, meets four times a year and shares examples of successful women talent management in the private sector, and ensures that the opinion leaders meet regularly and exchange views.