Aydan Ismayilova, MBA, MSc

Aydan holds master's degrees from Baku State University (Azerbaijan) in International Relations, and the University of Bergamo (Italy) in International Security Studies from which she graduated with honours. She also has an MBA degree with distinction from Wittenborg University of Applied Sciences. She has spent almost five years of her career in the major events industry, which helped her develop some transferrable skills, such as communication, stakeholder management, as well as human management skills.

Aydan started her career as an intern at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Azerbaijan in the department of UNESCO, where she worked directly in the planning and delivery of the UNESCO conference in Baku in May 2011. She then worked as an event specialist in the Baku Old City Administration (UNESCO World Heritage Site). This role led to the venue management role for the biggest event ever held in Azerbaijan, the 2015 European Games. The Islamic Solidarity Games followed in 2016, where Aydan acted in the role of venue general manager. As a venue manager she had to bring together representatives of many functional areas, from protocol to security to logistics and sport, to make sure they all delivered venue operations as a single team. Through these projects, she was responsible not only for managing venue operations but also up-skilling venue teams and delivering on-boarding, role-specific and other types of trainings and workshops.In addition, Aydan was also the main point of contact assigned by the organising committees in all the communication and collaboration with external stakeholders, delivery partners and incumbent venue operators. In this role, Aydan built successful and trustworthy relations with all parties involved in the delivery of venue operations.

In her most recent role as Operational Readiness Consultant, Aydan was responsible for the planning and delivery of readiness activities, such as train-the-trainer, tabletops and simulations to event organisers, such as the Dubai Expo 2020 and Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics Committee. In January 2021, Aydan joined the Wittenborg team as EU Project Coordinator.