Melike Balaban
Co-founder
After graduating from METU, Economics, she worked at Deloitte Istanbul office for 4 years as a management consultant at financial transformation and process improvement projects. Then she did strategic planning, pricing, budgeting and product management for Corporate Banking at Garanti Bank for 3 years. For the following 4 years she worked either as a founding team member or consultant for venture capital backed or TUBITAK funded technology start-ups on product management and user experience.
For the last 4 years of her career, she worked as a project director for a team of 15 designers at an international experience design agency. After getting experienced at developing design strategy, giving design feedback, project management and business development, she started Petri with Burak in 2020.
Refik Burak Atatür
Co-founder
After graduating from METU Industrial Design, he worked as a product designer for 4 years. Then he had a masters degree in “Human centered strategic design and design research” at Art Center College of Design, California, Los Angeles.
Before returning to Turkey, he worked as a design and strategy consultant for American Red Cross on increasing revenue and developing public interaction systems during and after disaster periods. During those years he also worked as a designer at Quirky Social Product Design Platform.
After gaining experience at an international experience design agency, on countless architecture, UX and service design projects as a researcher, strategy developer, designer and director, he founded Petri with Melike in 2020.