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Rotary honors a teacher and mentor with the 2025 Sylvia Whitlock Leadership Award

This Turkish Rotarian has promoted women’s financial literacy, funded scholarships for girls, and provided relief to earthquake victims

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The 2025 recipient of Rotary’s Sylvia Whitlock Leadership Award combines a longstanding commitment to empowering women with a talent for teaching and mentorship. Ayda Özeren, a member of the Rotary Club of Izmir-Gündogdu, Izmir, Turkey, is an author, mediator, and professional speaker whose work has touched the lives of as many as 11,000 women and girls.

Ayda Özeren , a member of the Rotary Club of Izmir-Gündogdu, Izmir, Turkey, is the 2025 recipient of Rotary’s Sylvia Whitlock Leadership Award.

“We have to change the leadership process. We should make more women leaders,” she says.

Özeren has spent years conducting financial literacy workshops for women as well as organizing mentorship opportunities and tutoring programs for girls. She published a book and donated all the proceeds to funding girls’ scholarships. In 2023-24, as governor of Rotary District 2440, she took the lead in relief efforts for victims of the 2023 Turkey-Syria earthquakes.

“I find her remarkable and inspiring, because whatever she does, she does it with her heart,” says Yeşim Yöney , a member of the Rotary E-Club of District 2440, who co-nominated Özeren for the award. “She’s a hard worker, a good planner, and she is somebody who is positive, who embraces people. I think that’s a very important thing in a leader.”

Özeren studied political science, international relations, and marketing. While pursuing a career in the banking industry, she learned how to be a teacher. She began conducting financial literacy seminars after her bank developed a program to provide startup funding to female entrepreneurs. Through Rotary, she led similar classes for women in rural areas, factories, and schools. She visited more than 100 factories and small manufacturing companies, educating around 8,000 women about finances and economic empowerment. It was by teaching others, Özeren says, that she learned how to lead.

“As a result of doing so many coaching programs, I became a facilitator. I became a trainer,” she says. “At the same time, I started tutoring in a university, giving lessons in strategic management. It was a little tough, it was very challenging for me, because I had to study each subject first before I could give a lecture to the students.”

Özeren found her next avocation almost by accident. She decided to try writing a blog, called Diary of a Banker, and discovered her talents as a communicator. In 2021 she published a book, “Aziz Coguz Biziz” (the title, she explains, translates roughly to “We are more when we are together”). She resolved to donate her royalties to pay for scholarships for girls, funding around 1,000 scholarships.

“Nobody pushed her to write a book,” Yöney says. “She just said, ‘I’m going to donate all the proceeds to empowering girls with scholarships.’ She’s a strong personality. As a woman leader myself, I really admire her.”

Özeren pursued many economic relief projects after the 2023 earthquakes in Turkey and Syria. She led efforts to provide mobile health care and dental facilities. Through a project called The Golden Needle, she helped women find work making traditional textiles. She also collaborated with city governments to distribute olive and sumac saplings to women in the farming sector, enabling them to continue farming after their crops were destroyed. The latter initiative helped keep the farmers on their land and is expected to employ more than 2,000 people by the time its finished.

“I was the district governor-elect at the time, so I just worked a lot to raise funds and get funding to the right places,” she says. “In those times you don’t think, you just help.”

A Rotarian for more than two decades, Özeren has served as her club’s president, a Rotary Public Image Chair, and her district’s executive secretary as well as the governor of District 2440. She is a member of The Rotary Foundation’s Cadre of Technical Advisers. She got her start in Rotaract and still maintains close relationships with her Rotaract friends.

“I’m still proud of being a Rotaractor. I still have that Rotaract spirit,” she says. “I always keep in touch with Rotaractors and try to get them involved in the international world of Rotary .”

Learn more about Rotary International’s Sylvia Whitlock Leadership Award.

— March 2025

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