Panel - Why Big Companies Can't Innovate - Startup Istanbul
Startup Istanbul 2017
Vera Shokina
Managing Director
Silicon Valley Bank
Vera Shokina is a Managing Director with Silicon Valley Banks’s Global Gateway group. In this role she assists international venture capital funds and innovation companies in the emerging markets with their US and international market expansion. Prior to joining SVB Vera was a Partner, CFO and COO of Runa Capital, $200MM venture capital fund, where she was responsible for all finance, legal, operations and investor relations functions. Active in both professional and civic communities, Vera is a former president and board member of the American Business Association of Russian Professionals (AmBAR), a non-profit business association of more than 10,000 Russian-speaking professionals based in Silicon Valley, and founder and board member of ArtWeekend, European Children School of Higher Arts.
Yinal Özkan
Turkey CEO
AWS
Yinal is Country Manager for Amazon Web Services, Turkiye (AWS). He brings expertise in enterprise architecture and specializes in the design of strategic systems and cloud architecture. His experience with various large scale enterprise projects has helped him build a strong foundation of knowledge in risk management, information security management systems, financial systems, utility computing, and complex internet scale solutions. Prior to joining AWS Turkiye, Yinal was in charge of AWS Financial Services Technology. In the past, as an advocate of information security community, Yinal has consulted for several Fortune 100 companies. He is the co-author of the book "Advanced Check Point Configuration," published by Sybex Publications.
Yousef M. Hamidaddin
Innovation & Change Advocate Anchored
Yousef Hamidaddin leads the Innovative Solution Board an initiative from the Foundation of HRH the Crown Prince of Jordan, and was previously the Chief Executive Officer of Oasis 500. His current focus is on developing funding models for startups and SME’s across the region to be launched this year, and creating innovative funds that can deliver the rebuilding requirements for distressed countries such as Syria, and Yemen.
For the last 3 years he has been focused on building and deploying a regional innovative strategy starting from Jordan & worked on developing innovative funds to deliver solutions that address the a region to be well positioned to be an "open lab” - a term he coined for early adoption that can take solutions globally. He sits on the Technology & Innovation Cluster Committee under the Ministry of Planning & International Cooperation, & appointed as part of the Jordan Technology Relaunch Team labelled as Reach 2025.
Asra Nadeem
Program Director
Draper University
Asra Nadeem is the Entrepreneurship Programs Director at Draper University, an incubator and entrepreneurship education program located in Silicon Valley. She primarily works with entrepreneurs and stakeholders to design and implements programs that build and grow global startups tackling the world’s most intractable problems. In the last 2 years alone, these startups have raised $40M in seed funding and have gone to YC, Techstars and 500, amongst other accelerators.
Asra has over 15 years of experience with product and market development for startups in the Middle East, North Africa and South East Asia. She was the first female product manager in Pakistan for Rozee.pk, led Bayt.com's special projects team to build web infrastructure for government organizations and MNC's in the MENA region and successfully launched the first dating website for Muslims; Naseeb.com.
About Startup Istanbul
Startup Istanbul is the leading startup event which brings together founders, investors and executives in the region. It's a gathering of the leading startups, internet companies, business angels and venture capitalists from Asia and Europe.
Istanbul is the perfect setting for a tech conference for Digital Minded Companies, Ventures and Startups with global ambitions in the region. This event is made of networking. Hours of networking with best founders, executives, entrepreneurs and investors all around the region.
