Mentors

 
Avi Alkaş

Avi Alkas ImageAvi Alkaş is an alumnus of Bosphorus University Business Administration and has more than fifteen years experience in the concept development, leasing and management of shopping centres. After working with  projects like Akmerkez, Carousel, Izmit Outlet Center as a professional, he established his firm Alkaş Consulting in 1997, and played a significant role leading projects like Maxi, Karada Marina, Olivium, Tepe Nautilus, Optimum, Armada, KayseriPark, KoruPark İstinyePark and Kent Meydanı. Avi is a founding member and the current vice chairman of TCSCR (Turkish Council of Shopping Centers and Retailers), he has also been serving as a board member on the ICSC (International Council of Shopping Centers) European Advisory Board and is present on the ICSC European Award Jury. Avi Alkas is a faculty member of the ICSC J. Riordan School for Professional Development. He holds, the professional recognition titles of SCSM ( Senior Certified Shopping Center Manager) , SCMD (Senior Certified Marketing Director), CLS ( Certified Leasing Specialist) being the first in Europe.Since August 2008, Avi Alkaş is the chairman of Jones Lang La Salle Turkey. He is married and has two sons.

Alvi Mazon

Alvi MazonAlvi Mazon has received his degree in Industrial Engineering from the Bosphorus University, Istanbul, Turkey. While still at the University, he co-founded Karma Bilgisayar and became the driving force to grow the company from a small distributor of OEM parts in Turkey to the largest distributor of OEM parts in Europe with revenue of $1.5 billion and offices in 20 European countries. Later the company was sold to a publicly traded US computer equipment distributor. Mazon also co-founded Arena and Armada Bilgisayar, which are presently traded on the Turkish Stock Exchange, and he serves as Member of Boards of these two companies. Mazon has invested into Airties in 2007 and joined the company’s Board to take an active role in the growth of Airties’ operations.

Murat Aktihanoğlu

Murat AktihanogluMurat is the Founder and Managing Director at the Entrepreneurs Roundtable Accelerator (ERA)http://www.eranyc.com, an early-stage investment firm and accelerator based in New York City. Before ERA he founded, obtained funding for and sold Centrl, a location-based social network in New York City. 

Murat holds a Masters degree in Computer Science and a BS in Electrics and Electronics from Bilkent University. He has served as a consultant to many established companies (AT&T, Sony, Logitech, Pioneer, Panasonic) as well as startups (Improv, Sonicbox, Atair, Plaxo, Manyone, Coollris) at the founding level to establish their engineering infrastructures and software development methodologies, and he has managed engineering teams at Silicon Graphics in Mountain View and Sony Corporation in Tokyo, Japan: http://holoscape.com He is a frequent speaker at technology and entrepreneurship conferences and panels, such as Mobile Marketing Association Forum, Monaco Media Forum, Ultra Light Startups, Siggraph, New York Entrepreneur Week, etc.