Duygu Alptekin Gürsu has been an internationally recognized, award-winning leadership and team coach, conference speaker, and author of two international bestsellers, specializing in marketing and leadership coaching for 30 years.

She holds both the MCC (Master Certified Coach) and ACTC (Advanced Certified Team Coach) designations awarded by the International Coach Federation (ICF), and is ranked among the top 100 coaches worldwide.

The leadership coaching approach she has developed since 2009 is based on a multidisciplinary foundation that blends her corporate experience with her academic knowledge in positive psychology and organizational psychology. This approach has led to collaborations with prestigious institutions, including CoachSource LLC, IMD Business School, Westwood International, and CCL, all of which have been recognized as leaders by Forbes and the Financial Times. She has coached executives and teams in over 50 countries.

Gürsu is a member of the Alexcel Group, a group of global leadership development and executive coaching thought leaders, and the Global Team Partners network, a European network specializing in team leadership and team coaching. Prior to her coaching career, she held marketing leadership roles, starting at Unilever and continuing for 12 years at The Coca-Cola Company. She developed marketing strategies for 50 countries across Turkey, Russia, the Middle East, Central Asia, India, and Eastern Europe. This experience has given her a deep understanding of leadership dynamics and, with a strong empathy, the ability to effectively facilitate transformational opportunities for managers.

In 2016, she received the Global Leadership Coaching Award in India and was nominated for the Leadership Coaching Award by the EMCC European Coaching Council in 2018. In 2025, she received the "Top Leadership Development Coach in Europe" award from Euro HR Magazine.

A graduate of Robert College and Boğaziçi University in Political Science and International Relations, Gürsu completed her master's degree in Organizational Psychology at Istanbul Bilgi University. Her book, "The Leader Within Me," was translated into English in 2023 and became an international bestseller in the US, Canada, Germany, and Turkey under the title "Transformational Leadership: Inspire the Excellence Within." Her second book, "Empowering Women on the Way to the Top," published in February 2025, became a bestseller on Amazon USA.

She is married with one child.