I help leaders and teams turn emotional intelligence into real performance.

I'm Dr. Yeşim Avunduk. I work with leaders, teams, and institutions who want to lead better, not just manage more.

Two worlds that rarely meet

My background sits in two worlds that rarely meet. For most of my career I worked as a senior executive in multinational companies, and today I lead the US operation of an international manufacturer. I know what it is to carry a P&L, make hard calls under pressure, and keep a team steady through a messy change. At the same time, I'm an Assistant Professor of Management Information Systems at Istanbul Topkapı University, where I research and teach how people and organizations actually change.

That mix is the whole point. I'm not a coach who read a book about leadership. I have done the job, and I study what makes it work.

How I work

I'm a certified MHS practitioner, and I use validated assessments rather than personality quizzes: EQ-i 2.0 and EQ 360 for emotional intelligence, and the Change Style Indicator (CSI 2) for how a person responds to change. These give you a clear, measured picture of where you are strong, where your blind spots are, and where a small shift would make the biggest difference.

Grounded in research

My research keeps me close to the evidence. My doctoral work studied how emotional intelligence affects job performance, looking at physicians and public transport drivers. My current academic work focuses on emotional intelligence in the age of human-AI collaboration, and on psychological safety as a driver of innovation in teams. What I learn in that research goes straight into how I coach.

Where I come from

Earlier in my career I led large international trade exhibitions, running big and diverse teams in time-sensitive environments where everything had to come together on the day. That taught me how to keep people aligned across cultures when there is no room for error.

What the work is

Emotional intelligence is a set of skills you can learn, not a fixed trait you are stuck with. The work I do is about making those skills visible, then building the ones that will change how you lead.