As the year winds down, I’ve deliberately slowed my pace to reflect.

I’m writing this from the USA, far from my own home, and that distance has been surprisingly helpful. Being away has given me perspective — on what worked, what didn’t, and what I didn’t do this year that I want to be doing more of.

2025 was a strong year. Productive, expansive, and intellectually stimulating. The work grew in scope, the rooms got sharper, and the range of what I delivered widened meaningfully. At the same time, reflection has helped me see where energy was best spent — and where it wasn’t.

This review is an honest snapshot of that.

The Shape of the Work

In 2025, my work sat clearly across three connected lanes: 

• Executive and business coaching, 

• Leadership workshops and facilitation, and 

• Advisory work with founders and startups.

One habit I picked up early in my career at Google was the discipline of collecting and looking at the data. So as part of my own year-end review, I pulled together a few numbers that capture the year in numbers: 

Over the course of 2025, I worked with 47 individual and group coaching clients,

delivered 12 workshops, corporate retreats, and talks, advised 16 different businesses. Alongside this, my LinkedIn community grew steadily to 13,329 followers, my newsletter email list reached approximately 4,000 subscribers, and I was invited to appear as a guest on 4 podcasts. I also received 29 five-star ratings and testimonials across my own feedback forms and Google Reviews — a steady signal of reach, relevance, and credibility built through consistent delivery.

What mattered most wasn’t volume — it was coherence. The work across these lanes increasingly fits together, reinforcing the same core themes: clarity, decision-making, leadership under pressure, and building systems that scale without eroding people.

Executive Coaching: Higher Stakes, Cleaner Decisions

This year, I worked closely with senior leaders and executives across organizations including JP Morgan, Google, YouTube, Meta, Aer Lingus, Lego, Apple, Luma, The AA, McKinsey, OpenAI, Viasat, Visa, Linkedin, Ernst & Young, Strategy& among quite a few others.

The work at this level is rarely about skills gaps. It’s about judgment, prioritization, and knowing where to apply attention when everything feels important.

Much of my coaching focused on:

• navigating expanded scope and visibility

• executive presence and stakeholder management

• decision-making under uncertainty

• leading teams without creating unnecessary noise

• career moves, role design, and negotiations

One idea that came up repeatedly was the difference between incremental progress and real leverage. As Peter Thiel argues in Zero to One, progress doesn’t come from doing more of what already exists — it comes from choosing what genuinely moves the needle. That distinction showed up again and again in conversations with leaders who were stretched thin, but capable of far more impact with fewer, better decisions, followed by implementation. 

Workshops, Facilitation, and Strategic Conversations

I delivered 12 workshops and facilitated sessions this year, both online and in person, and this remains one of the places where I feel most in flow.

Highlights included The Art & Science of Storytelling workshop with Kalle Ryan, where we worked with founders and leaders on narrative clarity — not storytelling as performance, but as a way to build trust, sharpen positioning, and communicate “why now” with precision.

I also facilitated an offsite for The Opus Group in Nashville, holding space for strategy, leadership alignment, and forward momentum in the same room - with lots of play. That kind of playful work — structured, human, and outcome-focused — is exactly where I do my best facilitation.

Throughout the year, I delivered talks and workshops for organizations such as Meta, Google, L’Oréal, WPP Media, as well as founder and leadership communities such as LEAP, INSEAD Entrepreneurship Club, and Google for Startups. Different industries, different contexts — similar needs: clarity, alignment, and systematic decision-making.

A defining feature of 2025 was getting certified in and fully integrating LEGO® SERIOUS PLAY® into my strategic planning and leadership work.

I finalized and facilitated multiple LEGO® SERIOUS PLAY®–fuelled Strategic Planning Workshops this year, including a session in Istanbul with Mindahead Consulting with Abdullah Aydin, Betül Seyren, Barbaros Kaptanoğlu, and Serdar Paktin that stood out for its depth and energy. 

Most recently, I wrapped up another strategic planning workshop just days ago — and it reinforced why this format works so well. In 90 minutes, participants build their current reality, surface constraints and saboteurs, clarify priorities, and leave with noticeably more focus and momentum. Building makes trade-offs visible. It shortens conversations that otherwise drag on for months.

Advisory Work and Founder Conversations

Alongside coaching and facilitation, I deepened my advisory work with Loyal VC, working closely with the founders Kamal Hassan and Michael Kosic supporting startups across travel, insurance, mobility and car rental, fintech, recruitment, edutech, SaaS, proptech, and healthcare.

I also facilitated a startup founders circle, where we talked about the real issues founders face: 

• decision fatigue, 

• time as the ultimate bottleneck, 

• hiring trade-offs, 

• incentives, 

• growth,

• and how to lead when you’re both operator and strategizer of the business.

This work keeps me grounded in execution. Strategy only matters if it survives contact with reality.

Momentum: Building a Scalable Leadership Platform

One of the most meaningful milestones this year was the launch of Momentum, my leadership digital course.

Momentum came out of a very practical need I kept seeing in my coaching and workshop work: smart, capable professionals wanting structure, thinking space, and solid frameworks along with a playing ground for action-oriented exercises and experiments -- all based on real life experience and in a self-paced rhythm. 

Launching Momentum forced me to codify how I actually work. The frameworks, decision tools, reflection prompts, and leadership patterns I use daily with clients had to be made explicit, teachable, and usable without me in the room. That discipline mattered.

Since launch, the feedback has been strong and, frankly, validating. Participants consistently highlight how Momentum helps them stay focused, apply ideas immediately, and maintain momentum rather than oscillating between insight and overwhelm. Based on early feedback, I’ve already expanded the course with additional masterclasses and deeper dives into topics like decision-making under pressure, executive presence, and leading through ambiguity.

For me, Momentum represents something bigger than a course. It’s a shift toward leverage — high-quality leadership thinking delivered in a format that scales, without losing rigor or depth. It’s also a foundation I’ll continue to build on in 2026.

Global Work, Travel, and Perspective

I worked with entrepreneurs and leaders across Chile, Mexico, the USA, Austria, Ireland, Turkey, Japan, Germany, France, Luxembourg, Italy, Portugal, India, Korea, Canada, Hong Kong, the UK, Singapore, and more.

As an expat, travel is simply part of my life — not an add-on. This year included work and leisure trips to Amsterdam for the INSEAD Alumni Summit (an intellectual tune-up I deeply needed), as well as time in Bordeaux, Lisbon, Surrey and London, multiple trips to the USA for work and family, and of course Turkey for both family and professional commitments.

Each place brings perspective. Diverse rhythms, diverse assumptions, diverse ways of leading.

Personal Grounding: Health, Movement, and Family

This year also reminded me — very clearly — that capacity has limits.

Over the summer, I had an emergency retinal operation for retinal tears, which forced an abrupt pause. It was a wake-up call. When your body insists you stop, you listen. That experience recalibrated how seriously I take recovery, pacing, and long-term sustainability.

Teaching yoga continues to ground me. Teaching at Hot Yoga Dublin and Yoga Next Door is one of the most stabilizing parts of my week. Being on the mat, in community, reminds me why embodied leadership matters. (If you’re local, you’re always welcome at my Monday 5:15 PM class 😉)

Swimming daily in the summer and weekly in the winter has also become a quiet anchor — a place where thinking settles and perspective returns.

Most importantly, I made time for my kids and loved ones. That’s not a footnote. It’s a foundational non-negotiable that gives me fuel. 

What I’m Reflecting On

Looking back, I’m proud of the range and depth of work this year. At the same time, reflection has made a few things clear:

• Some work was interesting, but not aligned enough

• Experimentation is valuable, but only within clear boundaries

• Energy is a infinite resource — alignment matters (and expands your energy) more than novelty for novelty's sake (which can sometimes drain it) 

Brené Brown’s reminder that “clear is kind” (simple, yet profound) applied to my own decisions as much as my reflections on past decisions (hindsight is 20-20!) 

My Word for 2026: Leverage

I’ve been sitting with a few candidates — adventure, connection, expansion. They’re all true, but they’re not precise enough.

The word that actually captures where I’m heading is Leverage.

Not in the hustle-bro sense. More in the strategic sense.

In 2026, I want:

• more impact without more drained energy

• more reach without dilution

• more depth, delivered to more people at once

Leverage shows up in how I work, not just what I do.

It means:

• more 1-to-many work alongside high-trust 1:1s

• more facilitation, workshops, offsites, and leadership development at scale

• more rooms where alignment happens once instead of being negotiated endlessly

It also leaves room for the other things that matter to me:

• adventure, through travel and new environments

• connection, through meaningful rooms and communities

• presence, through teaching, movement, and time with my tribe

Leverage is doing the right work in the right format.

Closing Out the Year

As 2025 winds down, I want to say a sincere thank you.

To my clients — for the trust, the honesty, the rigor, and the willingness to do real work. 

To collaborators, partners-in-crime, and fellow facilitators — for sharp thinking, generosity, and shared standards. 

To the founders, leaders, and teams who invited me into their rooms — physical and virtual — and allowed me to challenge, stretch, and support them. 

And to friends, peers, family, and community who cheered me on, checked in, and kept me grounded along the way — it has meant more than you know.

This year was full. It was demanding, stimulating, and expansive. It asked a lot — and it gave a lot back.

As I slow the pace at the edge of the year, I’m carrying forward clarity rather than exhaustion, and intention rather than momentum-for-momentum’s-sake. I’m proud of what was built in 2025, and even more clear about how I want to work going forward.

Here’s to closing the year well, and opening the next chapter with leverage, play, and alignment.

Hi, I’m Merve. I work with senior leaders, founders, and leadership teams who want clarity, alignment, and momentum — especially in complex, hybrid, or fast-growing environments.

If you’re an organization looking for offsite facilitation, leadership workshops, or LEGO® SERIOUS PLAY®–powered strategic thinking, you can learn more about how I work with organizations and book me here: 

👉 https://www.leadrisecoaching.com/organizations

Here are a few additional ways you can work with me:

1. Book a 1:1 Coaching Session High-trust, high-impact coaching for senior leaders and founders navigating complexity, growth, and change.

2. Bring Me Into Your Organization Leadership offsites, workshops, and LEGO® SERIOUS PLAY® sessions focused on strategy, alignment, decision-making, and team effectiveness. 

3. Join the Momentum Leadership Digital Course A structured leadership program combining practical frameworks, guided reflection, and real-world application — designed for leaders and business owners who want momentum without overwhelm.

4. Subscribe to My Free Newsletter Thoughtful, practical reflections on leadership, business, and decision-making — delivered monthly.

5. Access Free Leadership Worksheets Practical tools for reflection, clarity, and better conversations — available on my website.

You can also follow me on LinkedIn for regular insights, real client stories, and leadership perspectives drawn from my work across corporates, startups, and global teams.