MGA-professional

Sema Alpan

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Current position: Free-lance consultant

Background: chemical engineering, environmental engineering, environmental policies, environmental statistics, project cycle management, facilitation of participatory processes

She participated in the Salzburg Seminar coordinated by Lawrence Susskind in 1991, then in the IPMS Seminar in 1998. She involved in the IPMS Seminar as Associate Faculty the following year. It was a challenge to bring the trainings with its simulations to Turkey in Turkish with Frans Evers and Ida Koppen. It was her first experience to observe the cultural differences in negotiation while teaching the mutual gains approach in her own country.
She worked as consultant many years both in the government and in the private sector on environmental policy making. She facilitated many multi-sectoral, multi-stakeholder processes at the local and national level from National Action Plan for Climate Change (Mitigation) with about 1000 participants funded by UNDP to Preparing Management Plan for Yildiz Mountains Biosphere, which covered 31 forest village communities, funded by EU. By these experiences she acquired skills how to build trust as a woman facilitator, who is a foreigner for the local people, how to connect local people with each other and the area they live in, how to connect the people who work professionally on the area with the residents and users of the area.
She translated and adapted Lawrence Susskind’s book “Breaking Robert’s Rules” to Turkey to be published in Turkish. The book was the first of its kind in Turkey.
There are still too many things to do in her country in terms of participatory processes, facilitation, negotiation, mutual gains approach and consensus building.