Melsa Ararat is the founding director of Corporate Governance Forum of Turkey at Sabancı University. A scholar since 2003, she has a corporate background. She has held senior management and board positions in the Benelux, Asia Pacific and Japan before returning to academia.

Dr. Ararat is an activist scholar; she was a founder of the Global Board Ready Women project and Turkey’s Independent Woman Directors Platform in 2012. She serves on the Global Advisory Board of the 30% Club since 2020 and chairs the Steering Committee of the Club’s Turkey Chapter. She launched the Business Against Domestic Violence Project in 2015 in cooperation with the UN Population Fund which successfully mobilised Turkey’s largest corporations against intimate partner violence. She also serves on the Advisory Board of INGEV since 2020.

Dr. Ararat serves on the board of International Corporate Governance Network which represents global institutional investors and its Awards Committee since 2015. She also serves on the board of Global Compact Turkey Network since 2019 and co-chairs its Gender Equality Task Force.

Dr. Ararat holds a BSc degree in Chemical Engineering, a MSc degree in Thermodynamics and Phd in Management and Strategy. Her academic research is focused on the nexus of sustainability and corporate governance. She is a member of Daughters of Themis, female business school academics network and the co-coordinator of Emerging Markets Corporate Governance Research Network since 2009. She is a frequent speaker on gender issues at UN conferences.