Pelin Sürmeli

Pelin completed her undergraduate study at Koç University (KU) in İstanbul, Turkey, in the Archaeology and History of Art Department. She completed her track program under the Social Impact Forum on social impact creation and analysis. After graduation, she worked in an award-winning social enterprise, Ustamdan, and had to change to expand her network in the newly emerged Turkish social entrepreneurship ecosystem. She completed her master's at Bogazici University in İstanbul, in the Sustainable Tourism Management department. Her master thesis focuses on the social impact assessment of a local development project by defining the sustainability indicators. She worked at the KU Office of International Programs, where she coordinated various sustainability-related fellowship programs, such as the Global Learning and Leadership for Sustainability Fellowship and Entrepreneurs without Borders at KU. She organized the SDG Action & Awareness Week at KU in 2022 and 2023. She was a member of the KU Sustainability Committee. Before joining the CBS, she was a researcher at Prof. Zeynep Aycan's Leadership Lab. 

I also collaborated with researcher Katrina Heijne to develop a GPT-powered tool and workshop, based on our proposed prompting strategy, "prompt reversal." My professional experience includes roles as a teaching assistant at UvA and software engineering positions at Centric Software (Amsterdam) and ABB (Athens). Beyond software and research, I have been involved in creative work, contributing to film production at Nomadic Films (London) and recently performing in a dance theatre production.