“What good is being efficient if we’re not doing the right things?” - Damla Zeybel

2 min readMar 14, 2020

If I’d have to describe myself, I’d say I’m culturally aware and results oriented. I spent my early years primarily across Europe and Asia until I landed in the US for university.

I came into this world being part of an underprivileged family, and decided at a young age that I wanted to change this pattern in my lifetime. Somewhere at the tail end of my educational journey, based on merits and just the right portion of luck, I started a professional career at IFC, the private sector arm of the World Bank Group.

Here I could thrive. My background and motivation flourished in this environment where I successfully applied business and analytical skills while developing my leadership and management style. I simply loved leveraging everyone’s differences, whether behavioral or cultural, towards achieving strong results. Leadership requires continuous awareness and appreciation of what makes us different and unique. Too often we recruit talent and blame organizational impediments when they do not thrive — I believe good leaders healthily challenge and overcome such roadblocks and know how to shift resources towards efficient and effective outcomes.

I have gained global experience, working in finance, developing strategies and resources to execute IFC’s goals. I developed prototypes for capital adequacy and risk, profitability, staff efficiency metrics and workforce planning tools. At one point in time, I was managing nearly 250 people from well over 50 different nationalities; I loved it.

During my almost 20 year tenure at IFC, I gained enough insight and skill to now be able to venture out on my own.

I will be working on projects that somehow involve improving multicultural diversity and inclusion while achieving optimal results and outcomes.

“What good is being efficient if we’re not doing the right things?” - Damla Zeybel

Written by Point of View