Emre Gurkan

Mr. Gurkan was appointed CEO of Zain Iraq on May 13, 2024. He is a highly accomplished ICT professional having gained over 30 years’ experience in international telecom and management consulting sectors working with global telecom operators and media companies across North America, Europe, the Middle East and Africa. His strengths extend to corporate strategy, operational and digital transformation, mergers and acquisitions, corporate venturing and entrepreneurship, network and IT outsourcing, cost optimization, marketing, sales and driving customer-centric operating cultures.

Before taking on the CEO role of Zain Iraq, Emre undertook different executive roles within Zain Group as CEO of Zain Lebanon and MTC Touch and prior to that as Zain Group Chief Strategy, Business Development and Digital Officer, cementing the position of the Group within the digital space, focusing on the areas of innovation, digital services, corporate venturing, and smart cities. Prior to that, Emre worked at McKinsey and Kearney in the U.S. and Middle East and with other telecom operators, Oger Telecom (Turk Telekom, Cell C, Cyberia), in the Middle East and Turkcell in Turkey.

Mr. Gurkan holds an MBA from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Sloan School of Management, an MS in Management Information Systems (MIS) from The London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) and a BS in Computer Engineering from Istanbul Technical University. He has also undertaken research on Corporate Finance at MIT and published three white papers and a book on Relationship Management. Mr. Gurkan was a board member of World Economic Forum’s “Internet For All” initiative and was previously a member of Chief Strategy Officers’ Group (CSOG) at GSMA.