04 Feb 2020
We are very happy to announce that Akar Şümşet has been appointed as the new, and first, London Director for ATÖLYE.
Akar’s successful journey is a great example of the philosophy that ATÖLYE embraces. Akar first joined ATÖLYE as a community member—collaborating in ATÖLYE’s Studio projects as a consultant. Later, he went on to co-lead as well as take on the lead for several different projects, finally becoming the new London Director for ATÖLYE.
This appointment is a perfect reflection of the talent model ATÖLYE adopts as a community. Through this model, a unique opportunity was presented to select an already active member of the community to take on this new position. Finding a director in London from scratch would have presented difficulties. Our community provided us with a candidate who was already capable and positioned to take on this role.
Akar and ATÖLYE’s relationship demonstrates that not only steps can be taken towards creating impact on an operational level (project creation and management) but also on a strategic level (entering new markets) as well. Thanks to ATÖLYE’s approach, Akar will be starting with almost zero initial investment in terms of time, effort, and finances. More importantly, there are no unknowns in terms of Akar fitting into the culture, adapting to ATÖLYE’s work ethic and values and adopting frames of references (such as being human centric, tackling problems on a systems level etc.)
With the arrival of Akar, we are ever more excited about what the future holds as we expand our network and amplify ATÖLYE’s impact with explorations in new parts of the globe.
Welcome to the team, Akar!