Dr. Tulin Sener has spent 38 years in the financial industry, working with as well as educating others throughout the world. In a time when few women held top management positions, Sener was the first, and thus far only female president and chairman of the board of any bank in Turkey.

She began working for the State Investment Bank of Turkey (SIBT) in 1966 as a financial analyst after receiving her bachelor's degree in economics and finance from the University of Ankara in Turkey. Later, she went on to earn her master and doctorate degrees at Claremont Graduate University in California on a Fulbright scholarship. She returned to SIBT in 1979 to become president and chairman of the board.

Sener strongly believes that finance is an applied field and loves to bridge the gap between theory and practice. She demonstrates this by conducting workshops and seminars throughout the world as well as teaching on the university level. She has been a professor at SUNY New Paltz for the past 21 years, contributing to the creation of an MBA program as well as the internationalization of the School of Business. She has done so by creating an exchange program between the School of Business at SUNY New Paltz and Izmir Economic University, Eastern Mediterranean University and Yedipte University in Turkey. In addition, she has taught at several outstanding universities in the United States and Turkey and performed consulting for well-known multinational and financial institutions such as the World Bank.

Why New Paltz? It was close to New York City, a financial world center, and she felt she could contribute to building the School of Business.

What inspires her: Learning and creating new things, people with knowledge, determination and integrity.

Interests: Traveling all over the world, understanding other cultures, collecting stamps, and mountain climbing (in her youth she was always the only woman on the mountain).