Hello!
If you’re reading this, then you probably already know a little about Goodsted — but just in case, it’s a digital platform that connects those who are leading socially and environmentally impactful initiatives, with individuals and organisations interested in sharing skills and resources to participate in creating positive change.
You can check out another blog post that goes into more detail https://blog.goodsted.com/why-goodsted, but for this article, I wanted to connect on a more personal level.
My name is Selin, and I’m the founder of Goodsted. Part of my mission to create a better world involves bringing people together, and what better way to start than by telling you a bit about myself and my story so far!
Here’s the kind of thing that event leaflets say about me:
Selin Yigitbasi-Ducker is a passionate and ambitious award-winning female entrepreneur who is inspired to make the world a better place by helping more people take part in social and environmental development. Selin began her career in marketing in the city of London before making the leap and founding her socially-purposeful company. She has an undergraduate degree in Business Management at the University of Exeter, and a master’s in Design & Innovation from Goldsmiths.
However, I’m more than just a CV, and I’d love for you to get to know me as a human being! With that in mind, I thought I’d interview myself for you with a few general questions.
So, what do I hate the most?
The feeling that I’m not being as productive as I could be. In particular, watching my task list grow exponentially longer, while I’m stuck in a situation where I can’t deal with the demands and notifications that I’m getting pinged with. Also spiders.
What do I love the most?
Other than my husband (who will be spell-checking this for me and deserves all the love I can give him), the thing I love the most is spending time with my family — wherever they are in the world.
Favorite food?
Buffalo hot-wings; the spicier and messier, the better. Seconded only by Midye Dolma — delicious Mediterranean mussels stuffed with spiced rice, given a squeeze of lemon juice, and eaten directly from the shell. Yum.
Favorite Place? My favorite place has to be Cesme seaside in Turkey. Specifically swimming in the clear blue water beneath the sun on a calm morning. Hearing the waves lapping at the beach, smelling the sea air, and having sand between my toes is perfect relaxation… I wish I had the time to go there right now!
If I could only take one thing with me to a desert island…
It would be a satellite phone, so I can call for an airlift to get me back to the office! Or a bottle of hot sauce to put on the coconuts. Both good options.
Great. That feels a bit more like an intro to the real me!
About my family and my background…
As you may have guessed already, I’m originally from Turkey. I was born and raised in Izmir, where I grew up with my parents and sister who I’m really close to, and loved spending lots of time every holiday with our large extended family. My cousins felt to me just like brothers and sisters, and despite all being busy adults now, we still try to see each other as much as possible.
Family is a force in our lives that shapes us and molds us before we’re even aware of what’s happening. Mine of course was no different, and I’m proud to say that I’ve inherited my entrepreneurial DNA from my grandfather, Selcuk Yasar.
My Grandfather was — and still is — one of the key innovators in Turkey. His father owned a paint and marine supplies retail store in the 1920s, and in the 1950s Selcuk and his brother joined their father to open the country’s first paint manufacturing plant.
Following this first success, my grandfather continued finding new opportunities and established new businesses across different industries; many of them being ‘firsts’ for Turkey.. Thanks to his business successes he also undertook a number of philanthropic efforts, and aside from being proud of the jobs that he provided for thousands of employees, he established non-profit institutions, sponsored art, culture and sport, and contributed to education and literacy by setting up schools and even a University.
Our family business has signed the Before I was thinking in such grand terms however, home-video tapes evidence that I was just an insatiably energetic little girl, who loved to be involved in everything. Dancing around the dining table performing gymnastics when the adults were talking was a favourite of mine… UN Global Compact more than 10 years ago and we’ve been reporting on our sustainability since then. The report is now fully aligned with the Sustainable Development Goals, and we undertake various activities to progress. One of our projects, as a member of the UN’s Business Call to Action, aims to improve the lives of small-scale dairy farmers.
What I’ve also learned from my grandfather — and from my parents, who continue to work hard while giving back to the community — is that with all the opportunity I have been given, and the education that I’ve had access to, it’s my duty to use the tools at my disposal to try to build a better world. This means working to innovate in the social impact sector; using my time, skills and my network to help achieve positive social and environmental change.
I’ve always had a creative streak and spent many childhood hours painting, drawing, dancing, playing piano and designing dresses that I one-day planned on sewing. I was also a bit of a tom-boy, and got pretty serious about windsurfing in the summers — not wanting to play volleyball and follow the sporting status-quo like the majority of girls.
In middle-school, I was a fairly average student. Maths and science were my nemeses , and I struggled to engage with my lessons. As I matured through high-school, I learned a valuable lesson about using creativity to focus my mind, and began to excel where I’d been struggling by designing my own revision notes and competing with classmates for the top grades. With that being said, I’m sure some of my teachers would still be surprised to see where I am today.
University and beyond…
University was next, and I swapped Turkey for England and Izmir for Exeter. During these three jam-packed years, I finally took up volleyball — which was lucky, as that’s how I met my husband — got used to eating British food and drinking (too much) beer, made life-long friends, and struggled desperately to stay awake in lectures after nights out. Despite the late nights, University was also where I really started to blossom academically, and while I’ll be the first to admit that I’m no MENSA candidate, it became clear that my drive and determination to achieve the vision that I set out for myself were second to none.
A perfect illustration of this involves custard. Our group of friends would gather together one evening every fortnight, to indulge in a sumptuous group meal of fruit pies and custard. In certain circles Pie Club is infamous to this day. The pies were sometimes hand-crafted, sometimes store-bought, but always incredibly fattening. It was at these gatherings that I learned another indispensable life lesson — you can’t have pie without custard. So strong, in fact, was my love for the sweet vanilla nectar, that I made it a goal — and indeed the thesis for my dissertation — to bring custard to Turkey.
Needless to say, to the detriment of waistlines everywhere, the project was successfully launched and if you ever visit Turkey and see Pinar brand custard pudding on the supermarket shelves — I had a hand in that!
This is a bit of a ridiculous thing to have done, and despite the advantage I had by being involved in the dairy industry through my family business, I learned the value of being able to leverage the resources that we have to hand in order to pursue new opportunities. I also learned a valuable lesson about the importance of cultivating a wide network, and this aim would have been significantly more challenging if I didn’t know contacts who could put me in touch with the right people. This is something I’ve really taken to heart, and the personal network that I’ve cultivated over the last ten years or so has become an indispensable tool for my entrepreneurial self.
After graduating from Exeter, I started working in London as a Marketing Manager. The story of how I got there would be another blog article titled: ‘My journey of getting a full-time job in London as a recent graduate and a Non-EU citizen from Turkey’, but let’s skip that for now.
I spent two years working on a variety of tasks; business development, event management, branding, marketing, consulting…. One day I came across an article on ‘Design Thinking’ in the Harvard Business Review, and I had a bit of lightbulb moment.
Exploring a new path…
The concept of user-centric design, and design-led innovation really spoke to my creative roots, and drew me to Goldsmiths University of London, where I began exploring a new path is service and product innovation. This was also my first foray into creating a company, and I designed my first digital platform business with a co-founder alongside my studies. I applied my masters classes to this digital platform project, learned how to research, design and prototype, and spent more hours than I care to count with hammering away at my keyboard. Sleep was a luxury, but I really fell in love with the adrenaline injected into me by the responsibility of learning as much as I could and bringing a company to life. For various reasons this first business never made it off the ground, but it had given me a taste of what was possible and what it really meant to be an entrepreneur. I was hooked.
At this point I had graduated with a first in my Master’s Degree and began working part-time for my family business while I figured out my next steps. It was during this period where the seminal idea for Goodsted first came into being.
My journey with Goodsted begins…
It all started because I wanted to do more with my spare time. I’ve been so lucky to have the education and opportunities that I have, and since I was only working part time I felt like I could use my skills and knowledge to make an impact on the world around me. The only problem was, I didn’t know where to start! Naturally, like any millennial, the first place I looked was Google. I wanted to volunteer, but volunteering seemed somehow to mean ‘painting walls’, ‘picking up litter’ or ‘planting flower beds’ — all worthwhile activities, but not ones that would make the most of my skill-set.
The deeper down this rabbit hole I went, the more I realized that there really weren’t any decent networks out there for individuals to find meaningful skilled volunteering opportunities. I wanted take action for Sustainable Development Goals, but I wasn’t able to easily find initiatives that I could help in order to progress these goals.
What began as an experiment to help out a community project, became a fully-blown enterprise,
aiming to increase action and collaboration for social and environmental impact. I decided to use my Masters’ experience in digital platform design, combined with my business and marketing expertise, to start a social impact business!
The Goodsted team very quickly grew from ‘Just Me’, to ‘We’, as I was joined by passionate individuals who were attracted to the core mission of the company and became team-mates and advisors.
Even though we’re still at the beginning of our journey, we’re incredibly proud of our work so far. The awards that we’ve won, the accelerators we’ve been accepted to, and the milestone we’ve achieved in such a short space of time a part of what inspires us to keep working so hard. It has to be said however, that there’s no greater feeling than explaining Goodsted to a social entrepreneur or HR manager and seeing their eyes light-up. Talking to our community and realising that we’re helping to solve problems that they deal with every day, is simply the greatest feeling. And knowing that we’re all working together to improve the world around us as well just reinforces this sense of purpose!
If you’ve managed to read all the way down to the bottom here, then I thank you for your attention and appreciation! If Goodsted sounds like the kind of thing you’d like to get involved with, that’s excellent. Check out our website here ( www.goodsted.com ), and sign up if you have a spare minute! Or if you have any questions or want to know more — drop me an email at selin@goodsted.com ! Have a great day!
Originally published at https://www.goodsted.com/
