About

Esra Ünal was appointed head of legal of Statkraft Turkey in 2012. Previously she had worked as a legal counsel for Tucas Petrol for four years and as a regulatory affairs manager at the Japan Tobacco International for a further three years. Before her arrival at Statkraft, the local legal department had a very different management structure, which was not aligned to the general guidelines set by the Oslo-based legal department of Statkraft. Ünal undertook reforms and established the internal policies to apply the Statkraft legal guidelines. Throughout her in-house career she has been involved in a great deal of dispute resolution and she has proven herself to be an adept negotiator. For Ünal, being a part of the business and being actively involved in all the stages is the most exciting thing about her job. ‘My aim is mainly to prevent a problem. In order to do that, you need to be involved in the business and I am. In order to foresee a problem, I do risk assessment all the time. This gives me the opportunity to have a wider perspective. So, I am not only providing legal opinion or solving issues when they arise, I am involved in all steps. I do like that’. In July 2016, Ünal joined Türkerler Holding and currently heads the legal department at the energy construction company.