About

Described as ‘a proactive individual with strong negotiation skills’, Coca-Cola Turkey’s legal director Zeynep Derman Küçükönder has been working in-house for more than 17 years. With extensive experience in multinational companies, Derman Küçükönder started her in-house career as an assistant legal counsel at Hewlett Packard. In 2010 she moved to Superonline AS where she served as legal counsel for five years before joining Coca-Cola Turkey. She began her career at Coca-Cola as senior counsel and she has prompted significant change in the legal department ever since. Now, as legal director, she is an active member of the leadership and a key business partner that provides strategic legal counselling in alignment with the company’s policies. She recently contributed to two M&A projects that were crucial for the company’s development. When selecting external counsel, responsiveness is one of the most important variables for Derman Küçükönder and she adds: ‘For me it is essential that they are business minded, try to understand the business and create solutions, not only talking in accordance to the law. I like them to get the practice, follow up legislations, amendments and informing us when a law has changed or is about to change so we can take that into consideration when taking decisions’. She was recently selected to be a speaker in the Global Brand Protection Summit in Amsterdam, where she will be speaking about the use of defensive social media.