Biography
Meltem Günyüzlü Ateş provides training and advisory to leaders and organisations on AI and marketing. She works with organisations and leaders in Turkey and around the world. She is a Global Ambassador for the Global Council for Responsible AI (GCRAI) and mentors startups through Tech Istanbul.
Over a career of more than 25 years she has worked across management consultancy, creative agency and global marketing leadership. At the British Council she was Regional Marketing Operations Director, working across more than 60 markets, and delivered the organisation's first marketing-focused AI projects. She has led multicultural teams spread across eight countries, and her work with clients and partners spans Europe and the Americas as well as Turkey.
On the agency side she was Group Brand Director at McCann Erickson and MullenLowe, working with more than 70 brands across 8 sectors, including Nestlé, Unilever, MasterCard, Coca-Cola and Ülker. She started her career at Akbank on the New Horizons restructuring programme, run with A.T. Kearney, a period later documented in a Harvard Kennedy School case study. She translated Don Peppers and Martha Rogers' Return on Customer into Turkish as Kazandıran Müşteri (Rota Yayınları, 2008).
She graduated with high honours in Business Administration from Middle East Technical University and completed the Oxford Artificial Intelligence Programme at Saïd Business School in 2026. She is a Chartered Fellow (CFCIM) and a Certified AI Professional (CAIP).
She is a member of:
- Platin Yaka
- European Women on Boards (EWOB)
- Women in AI (WAI)
- the Artificial Intelligence and Technology Association of Turkey (YZTD)
- the Corporate Governance Association of Turkey (TKYD)
- the Professional Women's Network (PWN)
She lives in Istanbul and speaks Turkish and English. She has a passion for wellness and two sons.