Aylin has had a long career in business, a broad background in, among others, the corporate organizational consulting and telecom world. Both as a consultant, commercial manager, and director. In many of her roles, she worked for or closely with government organizations. Aylin strongly believes in more exchange between government and business.
Aylin: “That doesn’t happen enough in the Netherlands, therefore they remain two separate worlds, while they could learn more from each other. This separation is, for example, one of the reasons that the approach to the corona crisis in the Netherlands got off to such a slow start.
Aylin is also active in the media. She is a columnist for NRC Handelsblad and regularly joins TV programs such as Goedemorgen Nederland and De Vooravond and various radio talk and news programs. There she comments on and interprets current developments in the Netherlands and abroad. She also acts as a chairman and debate leader.
Aylin’s roots lie in the city of Izmir – formerly Smyrna. As a child, she spent the summers at the Aegean Sea where her whole family lives. As a result, she is fluent in Turkish. Her cultural background contributes to her ability to work within different (business) cultures. Her father came to the Netherlands in 1962. Aylin was born and raised in Rotterdam. She studied Business Administration and then followed courses in legal services and HR. Her recent mediation training helps her with conflict mediation issues within the business world. Aylin’s character is difficult to capture in a few keywords. However, if you want to label her, the terms ‘result-oriented’, ‘connector’, ‘networker’, and ‘analytical observer’ are unavoidable. She also hears others describe her as a ‘news junkie’ and ‘socially engaged political animal’. The latter, incidentally, from a social and liberal heart.
Before joining De Vroedt & Thierry, Aylin already had experience in executive search. At the age of 26, she had already built an agency from scratch. At de Vroedt & Thierry her work includes executive search for the public sector and the energy industry. ‘The energy sector is currently making a huge turn with the energy transition and the search for clean alternatives to oil and gas. This calls for creative, innovative, and socially engaged executives. It gives me great satisfaction to contribute to that.’
Aylin’s vision
‘If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more, and become more, then you are a true leader.’ That quote from former U.S. President John Quincy Adams reflects my view of leadership. I think many companies and organizations have drifted away from this in the 1980s and 1990s. But through the lessons of the credit and climate crises, I see our society, and certainly business, steadily moving back in the right direction. From the pursuit of self-interest to more social and ecological responsibility and finding fulfillment in things other than money and prestige. Young professionals are making different demands on work, career, and organizational goals than they did twenty or thirty years ago. This calls for a different kind of leadership: serving, coaching, involving, and connecting. Believing in this and wanting to contribute to it: is the core of executive search in 2021. I am consciously working on stimulating and giving space to diversity in companies and organizations. Not by pigeonholing people and giving certain groups preferential treatment. But by acting and thinking from the awareness that “pigeonholing people according to their origin is at the expense of free-thinking space”, as the physicist Robbert Dijkgraaf put it so well.
