Growing up as a child of a Turkish working-class family in Germany, Ekrem has always shaped his spirited multi-cultural personality throughout his global work-life experience. After spending 5 years in Asia, where he has built-up 2 subsidiaries from scratch, he has been hired in June 2019 by Microsoft for the Data & AI product sales leadership role for strategic customers in Germany. Besides, his free time belongs to the EdTech startup GDEXA, where he acts as co-founder and leading force of the free global mentorship program for students and young professionals. Prior to his actual role, Ekrem started his professional career in 2002 as a high-school graduate in the public sector, where he worked as an IT Consultant for the Ministry of Environment North rhine-Westphalia. He subsequently held management positions at SAP, arcplan (now Longview) and Datavard - always empowering enterprise customers with modern software solutions around business intelligence and big data analytics. As a lifelong learner, he is proud of making-up his Executive Master of Business Administration degree in 2017 from the Singapore Management University in conjunction with Wharton Business School (Philadelphia), Peking University and Indian School of Business (Hyderabad).