Itır Soğancılar, Director, Enterprise Risk Services

I graduated from the Middle East Technical University Department of Economics in June 2000. In September same year, I joined the Financial Audit Division of Deloitte Turkey. During university, particularly third year onward, you start thinking and talking about where other people work, what the graduates of your department and university do in professional life. In those years, audit companies were in the top three employers list. I met Deloitte when I did a summer internship in 1999, what really appealed to me was the enjoyable work place with many young members of staff, business relations conducted with respect and care, and the chance to get to know a wide range of people and industries through days spent in customers’ offices. Those impressions from the internship helped me make my decision with a clear head to join professional life at Deloitte.

During the next 4 years, I covered a variety of sectors from manufacturing to finance, in various cities with changing audit teams. At this point, I was at a crossroads to either go and work for one of the Deloitte offices overseas or to move to the other side of the table and position myself as a customer. My decision was to accept the offer from the Enterprise Risk Services (ERS), a department originally established in 2000 in Deloitte Turkey that by 2004 had a willingness to pursue a growth strategy with a larger team. It is thus that I took up the offer to relocate to Johannesburg in South Africa and work with my new Division in an assistant manager role for one year.

It is increasingly important in today’s world for sustainability purposes to manage risk at all levels of public and private entities. In this light, what we offer in Corporate Risk Services can be summarized as follows: It is about assisting the companies to design the necessary controls to acknowledge, evaluate and arrange their risks, and to assess efficiency of the control systems through periodic audits.

I have a tendency to undertake many things at once and to succeed in all of them. At times, it proves to be quite challenging though since the day I joined Deloitte in 2000, with all trainings I attended and in this continuum of learning and teaching, I can say that I found the chance to enjoy my goals.