OUR TEAM

After graduating from German High School, Melis completed Mathematics and Art History degrees at Columbia University. After a frenetic personal development journey, she realised her most inspiring pursuit was to mobilize people with sports. She started the “Hareket Candır!” movement, which has thousands of members and branches in six cities and which has collected donations worth about 600,000 Turkish liras. In 2012, Melis founded her own company, Actifit, and with her team she motivated over 30,000 employees and more than 70 corporate organisations to step into a healthier life. Melis is also the founder of Kızlar Sahada, where girls and women break the societal gender norms that tell people what they “can’t do.” Since 2013, over 6,000 women of all ages have played football, and donations worth more than 80,000 TL have been transferred to foundations and non-governmental organisations. Melis is also one of the creators of the SWEATers App, which promotes socializing with sport, and its ecosystem, including apps such as SWEAT FEST and SWEAT KIDS. She is the loving mother of Mila.

Kiraz’s first active meeting with nongovernmental organisations happened while she was studying psychology at Uludağ University, as she decided to join AIESEC.* Meanwhile, she decided what she “wouldn’t do” and moved to England as soon as she graduated to realise her plans. The social structure and NGOs in England drew her attention. While volunteering with Oxfam, Kiraz attended an NGO administration program at Birkbeck, University of London. She completed her master’s degree in Middlesex University’s International Human Resources department and wrote her thesis on “International Companies’ Corporate Social Responsibility and Diversity Management.” She published the results of her research at both domestic and international conferences and congresses, and as a post-graduate, Kiraz worked at Comic Relief’s Headquarters. In order to bring the innovative approaches and experience she gained to her homeland, she returned to Turkey in 2011 and worked for leading companies in various sectors until 2018. In her work life, she excelled in corporate sustainability, diversity management, gender, women’s empowerment, human resources management, communication, coaching and psychological performance counselling in football. Kiraz, who has been a volunteer for Kızlar Sahada since 2014, played a major role in Kızlar Sahada’s advancement with the imece social innovation platform. After the Kızlar Sahada Academy project was awarded by imece and became eligible to participate in the incubation program, Kiraz left her job and joined Kızlar Sahada as a founding member.

*AIESEC: A platform that empowers youth to leave a positive impact on society; the world’s largest NGO that is led by youth.