Bilge Uyan Atay is a co-founder of SOM. She has born in 1978 in Istanbul. After graduated from the Saint Michel French High School, she got her B.S. degree from Işık University. While she was working as a research assistant she received scholarship to do an MBA. She has chosen to do an MBA with thesis. Her MBA thesis title was ‘A Case Analysis of a New Strategic Alliances Attempt from the IT Sector’. She turned her MBA thesis into an academic article and her enthusiasm for the academic world started. She has always been passionate about doing research. In particular companies’ philanthropic activities, sustainability, corporate social responsibility were one of the subjects of her curiosity. She took her PhD degree from University of Bath. She was awarded a Research and Teaching Associate scholarship for her PhD. She is now a lecturer on Corporate Governance and Corporate Social Responsibility at Yıldız Teknik University. At the same time she is working as a consultant and conducting EU projects.

Areas of Expertise

The qualifications that she earned from the University of Bath provide her an academic expertise. This knowledge gives the possibility to answer the companies’ needs using unique research methodologies. Her research focuses on overall relationship between business and society. Stakeholder management, corporate social responsibility, corporate philanthropy, corporate community involvement are some subjects of her research interest. Corporate Community Involvement (CCI) is the topic that she has studied for her PhD thesis. The sample of firms analyzed in her PhD thesis comprises 92 companies listed in the Capital magazine listing of Turkey’s 500 largest companies. She investigated Turkish environment in order to fill the gap of the necessity of investigation of CCI in Turkey. In order to share the findings of PhD thesis with private sector, she published a report that presents an analysis of how firms are engaged in CCI and how these activities are related to various corporate characteristics showing the amount of companies’ donation. It has been known that Corporate Community Involvement is becoming an increasingly salient aspect of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR). Accordingly, she has expertise in the CSR area which encompasses strategic stakeholder management analysis for the companies, choosing the most suitable CCI activities for the companies from a diverse range of activities from philanthropic giving, employee volunteerism to cause related marketing and sponsorship, and she gives training courses for the managers who work at CSR or corporate communication departments.