Author Ussal Şahbaz

Ussal Sahbaz’s career includes leadership positions at corporate, non-profit and policy-making worlds. Ussal is a thought leader at the intersection of innovation & technology, regulation and politics. His work is featured in international media outlets such as Foreign Affairs, Forbes USA, Techcrunch and Wamda. He has been a speaker at U.S. Presidential Entrepreneurship Summits, Business 20 China, Global Entrepreneurship Summit Moscow, Arabnet Dubai, 5th Izmir National Convention of Economics, among others.Ussal holds a master’s degree in international development from Harvard University, and master’s and bachelor’s degrees from Bilkent University and METU respectively, both in economics. For the last two years, Ussal has been the director GE’s Istanbul Innovation Center, one of the 8 innovation centers of the largest industrial conglomarate globally. Prior to that, Ussal managed the Business 20 and Think 20 engagement groups when Turkey chaired the G-20; was a consultant on public policy to Google, Microsoft and Paypal; an adviser to Turkish President’s Office, and to the World Bank in Washington D.C. He also worked at Economic Policy Research Foundation of Turkey (TEPAV) to run projects on entrepreneurship and innovation.