Ekin Okat Graduate Assistant, OBER Pursuing an MBA from Tennessee State University, Bachelors in Business Administration, Uludag University Turkey, 2000 Email: okat1@yahoo.com Telephone Number: (615) 963 7244

Before joining OBER, work experience for Ekin included an internship at Mepar Transportation and Trading Inc. in Bursa Turkey from 1996-1998, while working towards his BBA. He was hired as a general coordinator by Mepar Inc in 1998. His responsibilities were preparing weekly and monthly reports for managerial and statistical analysis, assisting the general manager of Mepar with market research, identifying new marketing & business strategies as well as planning, budgeting and contract negotiation.

He has been working for OBER since March 2002. His responsibilities in the department are data collection, preparation for trend analysis & forecasting, statistical analysis, assisting in database creation and maintenance, helping with writing grant proposals and economic & business research.

The projects he is currently involved in are:

• TCCY- data preparation, sampling, statistical data analysis with using SPSS
  Nashville Business Area Newsletter- data collection, creating data tables, charts and graphs, as well as data analysis.
• Tennessee Competitiveness Study- data collection and statistical analysis.
• Immigrant Community Assessment Project database maintenance.
• The Davidson County Community Needs Assessment for the United Way of Metropolitan Nashville