Hafize Gaye Erkan, who is 41 years old, has become the first-ever woman to head Türkiye’s Central Bank .

After re-election of Erdoğan, Erkan, former co-CEO at First Republic Bank and managing director at Goldman Sachs, the announcement is done by Official Newspaper of Turkey today. The fifth central bank chief in four years, the 41-year-old replaces Şahap Kavcıoğlu, who spearheaded Erdogan’s rate-cutting drive.

Dr. Who is Hafize Gaye Erkan?

Born in Istanbul in 1982, Erkan graduated from Istanbul High School for Boys and completed the Industrial Engineering Department at Boğaziçi University in 2001.

Continuing his education in the USA, Erkan received his doctorate in operations research and financial engineering from Princeton University in 2005. Erkan completed two training programs on management sciences at Harvard Business School and leadership at Stanford University.

Erkan, who started his career at Goldman Sachs in 2005, provided consultancy services to the boards of directors and senior management teams of major banks and insurance companies in the USA on balance sheet management, stress testing and capital planning, risk management, mergers and acquisitions during his nine years there. gave.

Erkan, who started working at First Republic Bank in 2014, served as co-chairman (Co-CEO), chairman, board member, investment director, deposit director and risk co-director during his nearly eight years there.

Having been a board member for two years at Tiffany & Co, a jewelry company headquartered in the USA, Erkan joined the board of directors of Marsh McLennan, a global financial consultancy company in the Fortune 500, in 2022.

According to the San Francisco Business Times' 2018 research, Erkan, who is the only woman under the age of 40 to hold the title of president or CEO in America's largest 100 banks, was selected by the "40 Under 40 List" of the San Francisco Business Times in the same year as Crain New York. It was included in Business's "40 Under 40 List".

In 2019, Erkan was included in Crain's "Important Women in the Banking and Finance Sector" and American Banker's "Women to Watch List".