Facebook taps Derya Matraş as director for Middle East, Africa & Turkey

Global social media giant Facebook has appointed former McKinsey and Oliver Wyman consultant Derya Matraş as its new Regional Director for the Middle East, Africa and Turkey.

Derya Matraş – a former associate partner at McKinsey & Company and one time Oliver Wyman consultant – has been named as Facebook’s new Regional Director for the Middle East, Africa and Turkey. Matraş joins Ramez Shehadi, previously of Strategy& and Booz Allen Hamilton, who was recruited last year to lead the social media giant’s operations in the Middle East & North Africa.

“I am honoured to lead this diverse region for Facebook where our goals of building new experiences that meaningfully improve people’s lives and supporting millions of businesses that rely on our services to grow and create jobs, truly come to life,” said Matraş, who added; “As a woman leader, I am very proud to be appointed to this region where diversity is of crucial importance.”

An MBA graduate from Columbia Business School (concentrating in marketing), Matraş, on the back of an earlier BSc. in Electronics Engineering completed at Turkey’s Boğaziçi University, spent over five years as a senior associate consultant at Oliver Wyman in Barcelona from 2000, gaining significant experience in the telecom and internet sectors with particular respect to start-ups.

From there, Matraş took up her post-graduate studies, and on completion in 2007 joined global management consulting giant McKinsey & Company, with a continued focus on the telco and media industry together with the consumer and public sectors. Altogether, Matraş spent more than six and a half years at McKinsey before going on to a Vice President role at Dogan Media Group.

In 2015, she joined Facebook as Country Director for Turkey (incidentally, the company once registered itself as a ‘management consulting’ business in Indonesia in an apparent regulatory dodge) and in her expanded role it has been reported Matraş will be tasked with leading Facebook to “serve businesses and communities and to grow the company’s economic and social impact across the region.”

“The fast-growing Middle East, Africa and Turkey region is an important market for Facebook. Derya’s wealth of experience in emerging markets and her pioneering spirit will help us further drive impact and value in this uniquely diverse region, while maintaining our mission of bringing people together and building communities,” said Nicola Mendelsohn, Facebook’s Europe, Middle East Africa Vice President.

In addition to her leadership position with Facebook – where she says that she looking forward to continuing to drive the company’s “significant economic and social value contribution” – Matraş is also according to reports the California President of the Turkish American Business Council (Turkey has recently been involved in high-level trade discussions with the US) and a permanent member of the Women in Tech Foundation.