About us

MİNE DEDEKOCA

Workplace Culture Curator Mine Dedekoca was the first Future of Work expert in Turkey to bring together people and communities by organizing events to create awareness about flexible work. With her Happy Work Studio brand,  she guides organizations to create a “Happy Workplace” with happy, fulfilled, and self-aware employees by blending her own remote working experience with global practices.

Having 15 years of mid-senior management experience in international technology companies including country management, Mine Dedekoca is the first and yet the only Turkish person to take an active role in the remote and flexible work culture communities such as Running Remote and Hacking HR, keeping the pulse of the global change in the work-life. In addition to partnering with a number of pioneering companies of the future of work, she also worked remotely as the country manager of large global companies like Star Of Service and Crossover. She was recognized as the “Most Successful Country Manager” due to her successes at Crossover, a company that still has the largest remote worker pool in the world.  She continues her remote work experience as being the Head of Cloud Partnerships at Virtasant, one of the largest Cloud Technologies consultancy firms in the USA and manages a cloud professional community of 230 people.

Being a certified Happiness Coach by Happiitude India and Berkeley Well-being Institute, she has been leveraging her knowledge and expertise about “The Future of Work”, “Agile Workforce” and “Workplace Culture Transformation” to provide consultancy to more than 100 people and organizations, including Mey Diageo, Danone, Nutricia to foster a flexible and happy work life.

Having started to work as the Country Representative of the world’s largest public freelancer platform Upwork in 2012, Mine Dedekoca was the first to talk about the concept of the agile workforce in Turkey.  While giving keynote speeches about the transformation of work, she made a groundbreaking achievement by hosting world-renowned thought leader Jacob Morgan at Turkey’s first and most comprehensive Future of Work event that she organized. Her training program in collaboration with UNHCR to educate refugees to become economically independent by working as a freelancer was featured on Forbes.com by the American academic and thought leader Jon Younger. Having delivered Freelance 101 training in several different countries around the world, she has made an impact in the lives of hundreds of people by teaching them how to earn money by utilizing their know-how on freelancer platforms.  

Mine Dedekoca, who is a graduate of Üsküdar American Academy, Marmara University Business Administration and Sabancı University MBA and is married with 2 children.

DİLEK KARABEY AFACAN

After graduating from Istanbul Bilgi University Psychology Department, she completed her master’s degree in Okan University Social Development Department.

In addition, she studied “Addiction Counseling” at Çapa Medical Faculty and actively worked as an addicts counselor for 2 years.  She worked as a ‘Psychologist’ in the Istek Foundation Schools – Kindergarten Department for 5 years.

During her professional career, she had the opportunity to conduct her unique “Mom & Dad Parenting School” workshop with more than 1000 parents.

While she continues delivering her “Parenting School” program at several different organizations, she also works with parents by giving talks about “Being a Parent in the Age of Digitalization”. She works with companies to improve their employees’ well-being through giving workshops and talks about “Coping with Stress in VUCA”, “Managing Distress During the Pandemic”.