Dr. Reşat Fırat Ersin has begun his academic career at Istanbul Bilgi University in September 1997, and worked as a teaching assistant conducting tutorial sessions for microeconomics and macroeconomics courses up until August 2000 when he left the University to study in the United Kingdom with a scholarship granted by the European Union. Upon completing his postgraduate studies in economics at the University of Edinburgh, he joined Bilgi E-MBA Programs in its establishment phase by taking up an e-learning specialist position responsible for the preparation and adaptation of the content of e-commerce, cyber culture, entrepreneurship and small business management courses for online publishing. After receiving his PhD degree from the European Union Institute of Marmara University in December 2003, he worked as the assistant director of TUSIAD-SU Competitiveness Forum, an industrial competitiveness center established by Turkish Industrialists' and Businessmen's Association, between 2004-2005. During this period Dr. Ersin also worked as an adjunct lecturer at Bilgi for International Economics course in the Department of Economics and then Macroeconomics for Finance course in the Financial Economics Graduate Program for several semesters. During 2006-2007, he worked as a project manager in marketing research and then took up a managerial position in the business development and strategic planning unit of a major life insurance company between 2008 and 2012. Since then Dr. Ersin works as a senior consultant in business analytics and has been a member of Bilgi MBA’s part-time faculty lecturing strategy and marketing courses as of September 2014. Being a strong believer of collaborative learning, he frequently employs specifically-designed interactive group learning methods in his courses. Dr. Ersin’s current research interests include sustainable competitiveness, urban growth and competition policy.