Mert Çetinkaya

Mert Çetinkaya

Ahoy! I am Mert. I am leading ATÖLYE’s Academy, where I practice the art of connecting people and ideas. My passion is to help others imagine, and act on their visions. I am energized by supporting individuals, teams and groups becoming more adaptive in our complex and uncertain world. Being a bit of a generalist nerd, I am turned on by all things related to design, strategy, facilitation, learning, human experience, and existence. 

Mert is an experienced facilitator, organizational development consultant, design strategist and instructor. 
 
Mert joined ATÖLYE in 2015 to establish and lead ATÖLYE’s organization and learning design practice which gave birth to ATÖLYE Academy in 2020. At ATÖLYE, his work focuses on supporting organizations to build a culture of innovation and internal design capabilities by running immersive learning programs, establishing experience-focused communities and facilitating design sprints and human-centered design bootcamps. He also brings his expertise into the strategic framing of ATÖLYE’s projects and facilitation of multi-stakeholder social innovation processes. He has an extensive experience of delivering 300+ workshops and training programs under his belt.
 
Mert started his consultancy practice at Arama, a boutique consultancy specialized in participatory processes, where he worked with Turkey’s prominent companies, civil society and state organizations in the areas of strategic planning and organizational change.
 
As a learning designer and facilitator, he returned back to Koç University to design and implement educational programs in the fields of social innovation, social entrepreneurship and global leadership for undergraduate students. During his time at Koç University, he taught highly acclaimed “Changemaking in Action” course and build a core community of campus changemakers. Since January 2016, he has also been an adjunct faculty at Bilgi University and teaching design thinking and complex problem solving as part of different graduate programs.

Throughout his career, Mert was trained in systems thinking, participatory change processes, design facilitation, authentic leadership and learning experience design.  He also likes to think, read, write and talk about complexity, design theory and the future of consultancy practice.