I was born on November 23, 1986, in Izmir. Where exactly I came from, I couldn’t tell you, but a lifelong wanderlust surely came bundled inside. True to my Sagittarius nature, I embody a boundless curiosity for the world.

My family, of Sephardic Jewish descent on both sides, speaks a symphony of languages: Turkish, my native tongue, along with others I grew up hearing. I'm the youngest of eight cousins, all older, and some with families of their own. Ironically, despite this multilingual heritage, none of them speak Turkish. English, with its global reach, has become our unifying tongue since my childhood; generations ago, it was Ladino and French. This diverse, scattered family instilled in me a deep fascination with cultures, languages, and the individual stories of people.

Although my educational journey began at home like many others, I was introduced to the concepts of school and school buses at a very tender age—I started going to nursery at 1.5 years old.

Over the years, I've attended an eclectic mix of schools: one elementary school, two middle schools, three high schools, and five universities (notice the Fibonacci sequence there?).
These institutions ranged from minority schools, public schools, private schools, a prestigious national high school, universities that were physically small to ones that were sprawling, and elite universities.

I never fully grasped the differences between education and instruction. Nor did I completely understand what the roles of student, teacher, parent, and administrator fully entailed: In an environment where the stage setting hardly ever changed, everyone seemed to play their assigned roles somehow.

My identity as a student has evolved dramatically since childhood. Now an ever-shifting mix of teacher-administrator-student, I've traveled the globe seeking out diverse experiences: Oxford to Mardin, Hong Kong to Istanbul, Kigali to Berlin...

While an overly compliant student early on, especially in university, I became something of a rebel; not in the streets, but within the hallowed halls of academia. "If you want it done right, do it yourself" became my mantra. Abandoning plans for law, I embraced the world of learning and non-formal education.

The past 15 years have seen me deeply engaged in civil society, youth programs, and non-formal education – a dedicated "professional volunteer" and "volunteer professional."