Guler Aras

Professor of Finance and Accounting, Yildiz Technical University, Istanbul

Founding Chair, Integrated Reporting Network Turkey

Founding Director of YTU Center for Finance, Governance and Sustainability

Professor Guler Aras is an academic, a civil society leader and a researcher who leads key studies on corporate governance, corporate sustainability and integrated reporting. She is a professor of Finance and Accounting at Yildiz Technical University in Istanbul, where she served as the Dean of the Faculty of Business and also Dean of the Graduate School for many years. She spent a year as a visiting professor at Georgetown University McDonough School of Business in Washington DC. She has founded the Center for Finance, Governance and Sustainability (CFGS) and she also started the ground-breaking initiative on Integrated Reporting Network Turkey (ERTA), where she is still founding chair.

She is the author of more than 25 international books, and contributed to more than 300 articles in international journals and conferences. She is also the founding Editor-in-Chief of Journal of Capital Market Studies, and Editor of Routledge’s Finance, Governance and Sustainability Book Series. She has carried out numerous international and national projects and her project entitled ‘An Alternative Approach for Corporate Sustainability Performance Measurement’ has been awarded by TUBITAK (Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey).

Professor Aras is the founder and board member of numerous national and international professional and academic organisations. She is a member of the Accountancy Europe Corporate Governance Task Force. She has spoken extensively at professional and academic conferences and has served as a consultant to a number of governmental and commercial organisations such as Minister of Development, Minister of Finance, Undersecretary of Treasury and Minister of Labour and Social Security Employment in Turkey. She is a board member of Allianz Turkey and the Turkish Capital Markets Association.

Professor Aras writes a newspaper column to raise awareness in society to advocate responsible management principles that institutions should share both financial and non-financial information with all stakeholders. She is known as the ambassador of governance, sustainability and integrated reporting, and focuses on the education of the next generation of academics and business leaders who could promote sustainable solutions for societal and corporate challenges.

Her latest books, ‘Sustainable Markets for Sustainable Business: A Global Perspective for Business and Financial Markets’ (2015), co-authored books ‘Transforming Governance’ (2016) and ‘Corporate Behaviour and Sustainability: Doing well by being good’ (2017) and Women on Corporate Boards: An International Perspective (2018), are published by Routledge.