Education
Aybars Oztuna was born in Ankara in 1999 as the child of a civil servant family. After completing his primary and secondary education in Ankara, he went to Canada with a leadership scholarship and completed his high school education. He was selected for the Future Global Leaders Program by the University of British Columbia. After attending summer school programs at Oxford, Cambridge, and Sabancı universities, he earned a degree in international relations and intelligence studies from the University of South Florida in just two years, supported by an academic scholarship. While studying at the university, he held multiple jobs on campus and was an active member of the Golden Key Honor Society, as well as the Phi Chi Theta and Alpha Epsilon Pi fraternities. In 2023, he graduated from Johns Hopkins as the second-highest-ranking student with a Master of Science in Geospatial Intelligence.
Academia
He began teaching private lessons in 2014 as a student. In high school leadership club seminars during weekends, university teaching assistant, in 2022, he worked as a researcher at the Department of Public Policy and Global Relations at the University of British Columbia.
In 2023, he worked as a researcher in All Source Analysis. Since 2023, he is the advisor to the Department Chair of International Relations at Cag University and a lecturer at Istanbul Kent University.
Business & Leadership
He concurrently served as the student parliament president, basketball team captain, rock guitar lead guitarist, debate and MUN leader during middle school, high school, and university. In 2014, he founded Canis Majoris, the youngest rock band in Turkey, and received the best camper award at the NBA Ankara camp. He has a brown belt in Aikido. He started his career in the private sector in 2016. After working in Vodafone’s digital asset management department, Kloud Trader’s project management department, and completing an investment banking internship at Vakıfbank, he worked as a manager in many international companies such as Cineplex, Walmart, The Advance Group, World Bank, Walther Kranz, Remax, Gokturk Technologies, and Gerson Lehrman Group. In 2023, he began working as an international lead auditor. He continues to work as a managing partner at Oztuna&Partners and Ernst&Young.
Politics & Policy
As a young Turkish politician, he started his political career in 2017, with the invitation of Meral Akşener, by joining the İYİ Party. He became Ankara’s Youngest Deputy Candidate in the 2018 elections. He served as the advisor to the president between 2017 and 2020 and as the head of global affairs under the youth policies department between 2020 and 2022. In 2023, he completed internships in advisory roles at the UAE Embassy, the Grand National Assembly of Türkiye, and the 11th Presidency Office. Since 2023, he works as a policy advisor at Adana, Ankara and Istanbul Metropolitan Municipalities.
Memberships & Fellowships
Oztuna is a member of Chatham House, the International Political Science Association, the American Economic Association, Conseil de l’Europe, Turkish Hearths, and a Political Leadership Excellence Fellow at Konrad Adenauer Stiftung. He is also a McKinsey Forward Fellow, a citizen juror at the European Capital of Democracy, an IKAR Global Institute youth ambassador, a youth fellow at the International Republican Institute, John Galt School Fellow and the founder & CEO of the Geospatial Intelligence Institute.
Volunteer Work, Publications & Media
Oztuna is a philanthropist. He established and served more than ten NGO’s and over $200K combined for the direct causes. He is an autodidact polyglot and author of five books, two albums, six scientific peer-reviewed articles, over hundred other articles. He writes weekly columns at his exclusive Substack, along with Le Coin des les Livres, Unternehmergeist: Erfolg im Business, and Morning Quotes Podcast.
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