Helping organizations measure & narrate the impact of their transformation efforts.
#storytelling #impactassessment #artofhosting #value #culture
#seinfeld – a show about nothing
A Robert College alumna, Çiğdem graduated from Sociology at Galatasaray University in 2008 and completed her graduate studies at the same institution’s Strategic Communications Management Program in 2019. Her MA thesis focused on communicating for social good and took social entrepreneurs in Turkey as a case study. She proposed a model for enhancing communication strategies for social entrepreneurs.
At HMD, Çiğdem is currently responsible for impact monitoring and evaluation of all our projects. She also designs feedback mechanisms within our team and with our partners and facilitates internal debates on our way of working. In short, she is the “Project Manager for HMD” (#hmdasaclient). Given her interest in storytelling, she is also the author of our transformation stories and has a general outlook on every written output of HMD.
As part of her prior professional experience at Sabancı University between 2009-2018, she worked as the Coordinator of the Mercator-IPC Fellowship Program at Istanbul Policy Center and as Training Programs Officer at Education Reform Initiative. She also gained hands-on experience as a freelance consultant on project management in 2019 at 451 İletişim, The Rural Schools Transformation Network (KODA), and TURA consulting. Çiğdem participated in Social Return on Investment (SROI) Accredited Practitioner Training organized by Social Value UK and KUSIF in 2019, and she is also professionally interested in the Art of Hosting (AoH). She took a special training program on Participatory Leadership at European Forum Alpbach in 2016, and a summer course organized by LEAD Germany on Digital Leadership in 2018 and ever since has been implementing AoH principles and practices in her facilitation work.
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Get to know Çiğdem in 3 questions
“What exasperates you?”
Not taking responsibility for one’s actions exasperates me. Be it wrong, be it correct, it doesn’t matter, own what you do.
“What compliments do you dismiss?”
I dismiss compliments about being curious to learn new stuff & skills and dive right into it. I believe if it intrigues your interest, it is worth your time.
“What do you think about when you have nothing to think about?”
I always think about how we manifest humanity in our daily experiences individually or collectively. Any small change we do now, can (and will) lead to a meaningful transformation.