After getting her graduate degree from University of Virginia in 1991, Ms. Ayken served as an instructor for 4 years in Bilkent University.
Between 1995 and 1998, she worked as the Training Manager at Sheraton Ankara Hotel & Towers and Sheraton Voyager Antalya Hotel. Having received trainings on Change Management in Brussels and London, she was appointed as the Change Agent and Coordinator of Sheraton Hotels and gave trainings in numerous countries on this matter.
Between 1998 and 2004, while serving as the Human Resources Manager at MilSOFT Software Technologies, besides her human resources missions, she led activities targeting compliance of corporate processes and procedures to various quality models.
Since 2004, Ms. Ayken has been the Human Resources and Quality Systems Manager at TAV Esenboga Airport. In recent years, she started working more intensively on Internal Audit, Change Management, Performance Management System, Talent Management, Coaching and Mentoring. On top of giving individual and corporate lectures both in Turkey and abroad, she is both a practitioner and a trainer of Executive Coaching, Coaching, NLP, Hypnosis, Psychology and Psychotherapy.
Esra Ayken has continued her career as Human Resources and Organizational Development Director at Güven Health Group between July 2018 – September 2020.
Advisor to TIKAV (Turkish Human Resources Foundation), Executive Board Member at PERYON (People Management Association of Turkey), Ms. Ayken has a son named Arda.