Nur Yavuz
Co-Founder || Co-Director
Nur is an architect by profession: She worked and lived in Turkey, Greece, NY and the Bay Area. She is teaching drawing and design at USF now. She likes diving deep in wisdom traditions and embodiment practices, which led her to music and dancing. She loves singing and whirling, and nowadays learning how to play Yayli Tambur. Recently she gave a 40 days of feminine empowerment workshop with tints of yoga. meditation and Anatolian Wisdom.
Duygu Gün
Co-Founder || Co-Director
Duygu is an arts professional, musician, artist and curator. After roaming around Europe she landed in SF in 2012. She is performing arts corporate fundraiser by day, community organizer by night. She is currently practicing relentlessly expanding her repertoire of folk music for her accordion-guitar duo Nakarat. Their music is a vibrant, emotional melange of folk songs in Turkish, Ladino, Greek, Griko and Italian, bringing spicy nomadic tunes from the region.
Gary Haggerty
Board
Gary is an independent music professional, he plays Oud, Tambur, Saz and some other string instruments. He performs Arabic, Turkish, Greek music giving concerts throughout California. He is studying Turkish Classical music over 15 years and he brings together musicians at his home - the string palace - in jam / meşk format
performing Sufi music from Anatolia.
Tuba Doğu
Board
Tuba is an architect and academic. She was a backpack traveler, a wanderer last decade. Currently, she is settled in Izmir, grows plants and learns to make ceramics. She likes experimenting with other ways of practicing architecture through research and public interventions; trying to understand how people relate to cities and how public spaces relate to people.
Demet Yeşilbaş
Board
Demet worked in cinema and TV industry for over 15 years. She was assistant director to films like Sonbahar -The Fall- until she decided to quit -yes suddenly-. She is an activist on gender issues and immigration politics besides being a yoga teacher and astrologer. She likes dreaming under the stars aswell.
Bengü Gün
Strategy Consultant
Bengu is a curator, arts manager and professional matchmaker. She is living in Istanbul, in her favourite city, and has a great passion for travelling. Her aim is to support emerging talents from Turkiye and help them discover their potential. You can find her dancing forro on the beach while she is not in front of her computer or in a studio visit.
Şölen Bazman
Creative Director
Solen is a product designer by education, graphics, and exhibit designer by experience. She worked as a multidisciplinary designer in many institutions and started her own company. Her second degree is in Holistic Health Science, to initiate projects combining creativity and well-being. As a descendant of diverse Anatolian origins, she believes in the power and collective wisdom of communities.
Emre Yıldız
Graphic Designer
Emre is a graphic designer and academic. Born in Giessen, Germany in 1980, living in İzmir, Turkey, holding his MA in Graphic Design, currently working as a full-time lecturer. Besides creating visual identities and communication tools for cultural projects and designing display fonts idotless, Emre curates for and organizes projects based on urban culture, design culture, and art under the roof of NomadMind, which he co-founded in 2012.
Fahrettin Taşdelen
Branding Consultant
Fahrettin is a product designer who is an expert in user interface and user experience and also an adviser for a few startups in Silicon Valley. He is interested in Emotional Design and Human Behaviour nowadays. He is also dabbling in taking photos and creating hand-crafted mix arts. He is into different blends of coffee and tea and cooking!
Berat Çokal
Culinary Arts Program
Coordinator
Born 1976, Bursa. BA in Architecture, MFA in Graphic Design. Worked as a Creative Director in experience design projects and as part-time design/gastronomy instructor at Kadir Has and Altınbaş Universities in İstanbul. Started cooking as a childhood hobby and became a reputable food writer, critic and recipe developer in Türkiye, sharing recipes and ideas about cuisine on social media under the name @mosyosokola. Currently working on a new cookbook in Bodrum, Muğla Turkey.
Derya Özkan
Film Studies Program
Derya received her Ph.D. in Visual and Cultural Studies from the University of Rochester, in 2008. She taught courses at Istanbul, Rochester, Munich and Izmir. Her research cuts across Film Studies, Urban Studies, Visual Studies, Cultural Studies, Gender Studies, Critical Theory. Since she moved to Izmir in 2015, she has been working in the Cinema and Digital Media Department at IUE.
Güldem Baykal Büyüksaraç
Heritage Program Coordinator
Güldem is teaching in Anthropology Department in Istanbul University. She has been engaged in research areas, including heritage and conservation, space and landscape, identity/post-identity politics. She is lately interested in posthumanism in art and science.
Nikolas Derin Paraskevopoulos
Intern
Born in Athens in 2007 he lives between Athens, Izmir and Bay Area. He is currently attending Berkeley High @10th grade. He is studying and practicing DJ'ing. He loves handcrafts. He is famous with his airport models he produced when 13. He loves sneakers, and established his business as Niko-Kickz in 2022. Nikolas is fluent in Greek-Turkish and English.
Temka Serengel
Intern
Temka attends Berkeley High and trying to decide either he wants to study architecture or math. He loves and practices Archery. He enjoys arts and crafts from around the world. He is Mongolia born, raised in Hungary, currently living in Berkeley,