About

Highly experienced in corporate and commercial affairs, Oyku Api was appointed country legal manager at Metlife in 2011. Prior to that, Api was working for a law firm, dealing with international clients on corporate, commercial and competition matters, which later proved very useful for her in-house career. When she joined Metlife one of her top aims and achievements was to create a favourable perception of the legal department within the business. ‘I think the biggest change that I made is that I created an awareness in the company that legal is not here to stop the business, in fact it is here to guide the business to realise our company strategies together by complying with the required laws and regulations’. Working in a highly regulated area, Api believes there is not much an in-house lawyer can do to change the external factors that affect the business, but they can do a lot to predict and be prepared. ‘I pay attention to the world’s agenda. If something happens in China I know that there might be side effects in Turkey as well. So I am trying to monitor the developments and get prepared to overcome the challenges’. Api is currently leading the local chapter of a Metlife global diversity project and has organised training events and discussions on leadership models, bias and ways to tackle similar issues as part of a woman’s career path. She has made impressive progress with the project’s programming in Turkey and has encouraged female employees to vocalise opinions on the project, using various multimedia platforms. She was the first counsel in Turkey to receive the Matthew J. Whitehead II Individual Diversity Award for her work on this project.