The Online: Professional
As the lead for Commercial Strategy across our international markets at GoDaddy, I sit in the kitchen of revenue driving initiatives and activities. I have a team that sits across five timezones and we work across product, platform, partnerships and more to drive the business forward while maintaining a focus on operational efficiency through scale.
Having been with GoDaddy for almost seven years, I’ve had the privilege of launching several markets within the EMEA region and shaping our regional priorities to directly influence growth. As the GM for our Dubai hub, I've been active in enabling and empowering regional businesses and entrepreneurs, particularly in their native local language including Arabic. Under my leadership the GoDaddy brand has grown in MENA to become a true partner for small businesses and entrepreneurs in the region.
Throughout 2020, I successfully launched GoDaddy’s first local brand marketing campaign, an Arabic version of godaddy.com and an Arabic Website Builder and GoDaddy E-Store, an e-commerce product, to further support GoDaddy’s customers in the region. 2021 followed with a second localized marketing campaign and strategic partnership with the Arab Fashion Council, in parallel to enhancing the product portfolio and user experience to better meet the needs of MENA customers.
I have a passion for supporting and fostering woman in business, pioneering a partnership with GIZ Egypt in Summer 2021 to host schoolgirl interns as part of its ProGirls program to help introduce them to STEM roles. In parallel, I’ve pushed GoDaddy into the training space, supporting the up-skilling of SMEs and entrepreneurs through hands on workshops to help them better leverage digital platforms.
I’m always seeking opportunities to share my expertise and in turn develop myself, engaging with nascent brands, small businesses and media or event partners. From data visualization to marine engineering and more, I’ve had the opportunity to support brands such as The Visual Agency, Consultants and Arti Proje on various go-to-market, brand or product launch and individual project initiatives.
Right now, I’m spending most of my free time as an active member of the Advisory Board of Blatform, a first of its kind blockchain enabled Business as a Service (Baas) platform that transacts in the crypto-economy, and as part of the Advisory Circle at Innovators Gate.
Prior to my role at GoDaddy I worked in the marketing and communications field with several global and local brands, and industries.
My career kicked-off in the infrastructure industry, where I established the corporate communications and marketing department from scratch – launching a new corporate brand, streamlined project communications and processes across the company.
With projects across Turkey and the Middle East, I worked at a corporate brand, public project (metro, airport, roads and more) and private investment level, the latter giving me tourism and commercial investment experience through the likes of the Le Meridien Istanbul and Doria Hotel Bodrum hotel projects and the construction and opening of the Kas Marina in Southern Turkey, where I assumed the role of project coordinator to secure joint-investment with Turkey’s largest tourism company, Setur.
This was an incredibly challenging but rewarding role where I would shift from media networking and brand story-telling, visiting project sites to oversee productions and creation of marketing collateral, to real-time crisis management, large-scale brand sponsorships and company representation at a government level. The tourism projects were exciting, linked to driving sales and awareness while Kas had me deep in public affairs, engineering design execution and niche sales and marketing – to this day, Kas is one of my most favourite places on earth, and the marina one of the most beautiful in Turkey.
I wanted to dip my toes into the agency side and shifted over to Arti Communications, where I headed the international client teams for the likes of Facebook, Euler Hermes and Verisign Inc.
From positioning Euler Hermes as the go-to source for macro-economic analyses in the local market to influencing Facebook’s community and content guidelines, I loved the diversity of client needs and initiatives in this role, and developed my Turkish to what I’d like to think is a ‘pro’ level (translating macro-economic reports from English to Turkish will do that to you!) Sitting in the driver’s seat of strategic communications planning to translate global targets into the local landscape with effective execution unlocked creativity, discovery and valuable conversations internally and with external stakeholders.
From here I moved to Amsterdam to lead media relations across a natural gas pipeline project that spanned six countries.