MALVERN, Pa. — Years before Cansu Akkol got the chance to work with Google, one of her finance professors recognized her skills. She said she was surprised when Associate Professor Manohar Singh invited her to a coffee chat and told her he thought she would do well in tech companies, that she had the talent to contribute to finance and strategy within them, and he could help her network with people in that sector.
“He inspired me,” Akkol said. “This was the first time I felt seen.”
She had had a good undergraduate education at one of the best universities in her home country of Turkey, but she was used to crowded classrooms and little connection with her professors unless she chased them down to ask for reference letters.
“That was the education system I’ve seen all my life,” she said. “You just see your professors at the class, but you don’t feel like they see you.”
But in Penn State Great Valley’s master of finance program, she said, “the professors really cared.” They saw her skills and interests and coached her as she considered options and made plans.
Akkol said she was impressed not only with her professors’ thoughtfulness but also with their director-level work experience with respected corporations. They used real-life case studies in her classes on corporate finance and financial statement analysis, encouraging students to engage in executive-level thinking and thoughtful examination of companies’ financial dynamics.
“They are making you think and question and find your way to what’s going on with that company, really,” she said.
Akkol also appreciated having access to industry-standard databases and real-time market data terminals on campus, as if she and her classmates were working on Wall Street’s trading floor. The curriculum exposed her to the daily realities of life in a challenging corporate setting, she said.
Beyond the course content, Akkol said she had valuable opportunities in her classes to network with and learn from diverse classmates who had good careers in finance and who helped some of her classmates find jobs in the industry.
After Akkol completed her master’s degree in 2012, she returned to Turkey to work in the oil and gas industry, to fulfill the post-graduate work requirement tied to the Turkish government scholarship she had received. She worked in pricing, and she said she found it interesting to develop smart pricing strategies to navigate the complexities of long-term, billion-dollar agreements between countries, taking into account the many short-term, unpredictable changes in inflation and petroleum prices.
Akkol went on to build an international career in pricing across different sectors and countries — in Canada, she worked at Hankook Tire and then Philips, a health technology company. She is now pricing principal at Google Cloud, starting her role in Dublin, Ireland, and continuing in Dubai, United Arab Emirates.
During her career, Akkol said her willingness to relocate has opened up more opportunities for her professionally and has allowed her to travel and feed her sense of adventure. She enjoys the continuous learning required for her work in pricing and the close collaboration with many cross-functional teams to help her learn continually about the dynamic field of cloud services and AI, which she says she enjoys to the fullest.
However, she acknowledged that changing industries and countries can be challenging, and it can take time to learn the culture of each company and nation.
“The art of adaptability helped me,” she said. “I’m not scared to look like I don’t know.” She loves to connect with people, ask questions to understand her company’s values and cultivate a positive culture of teamwork that she can lean on. She also learned to look for support through the Nittany Lion network.
“Alumni have a good ecosystem where they help each other. You really need it when you move to another country,” she said.
Akkol connected with the Penn State Alumni Association chapter in Dublin, and when she moved to her role in Dubai, she got in touch with that city’s alumni chapter. She realized they were holding a meeting the same day she was flying in, so she went.
“This was my very first activity in a totally new country where I didn’t know anyone. And I really met amazing people,” she said. The event included presentations, networking, good food and everyone was very welcoming, Akkol said.
When a few alumni introduced themselves and asked when she had moved to Dubai, they didn’t believe her at first when she replied, “Today!”
“That night, I automatically felt at home,” she said. “And they all helped me with many, many things after that.”
The group was a valuable source of not only professional support but also practical guidance, Akkol said, like how to register children for school and what neighborhoods were good places to live.
Reflecting on her career at prominent companies spanning four countries, Akkol said her proudest accomplishment is being happy in her work life. Although the corporate world can be stressful for many people, she said she doesn’t feel the stress but feels joy in her relationships with other Penn State alumni and in the value of her daily work for her company, for the world and for herself.
“I believe in AI, how it is making our lives easier,” she said. “The better job I do at pricing this world-changing technology, the better I serve to integrate this technology into our lives.”
Source: www.psu.edu
