Gulru Atak

Gulru Atak was appointed Head of Citi's Innovation Lab in Dublin and Global Head of Innovation for Citi's Treasury and Trade Solutions (TTS) business. She holds a BA degree in Business Administration from Bogazici University in Istanbul, Turkey, and began her career at PriceWaterhouseCoopers as an associate in Assurance & Business Advisory Services in September 2000.

Atak joined Citi Turkey in 2002 and accumulated 15 years of experience in banking with various responsibilities in product and business management. Prior to her Dublin appointment, she served as TTS head for Turkey and non-presence countries in Central Asia and the Caucasus. She was a 2015 graduate of the Citi Women's Leadership Development Programme.

As Global Head of Innovation for TTS, Atak led a team of 30 at Citi's Dublin-based innovation lab, where her team worked with clients to turn ideas for the financial sector into actual products, leveraging artificial intelligence, machine learning, and blockchain. Notable achievements included developing payment outlier detection—a tool using AI and machine learning to monitor payment records and identify suspicious transactions, which took approximately a year and a half to develop and involved a 10-bank piloting process before global rollout. She also oversaw internal blockchain experiments, including the Citicoin project, while focusing on leveraging the existing payments ecosystem and working with fintech partners and regulators like SWIFT.

Career history

• Head of Europe Transaction Banking, Barclays (joined mid-July 2023)
• Global Head of Innovation, Institutional Clients Group, Citi; led franchise growth and innovation agenda with focus on new business models and partnerships
• Head of Innovation Lab, Dublin & Global Head of Innovation, Treasury and Trade Solutions, Citi
• Head of Treasury and Trade Solutions, Turkey and non-presence countries in Central Asia and the Caucasus, Citi (April 2014–2017)
• Associate, Assurance & Business Advisory Services, PriceWaterhouseCoopers (September 2000)

Gulru Atak's transition to Barclays as Head of Europe Transaction Banking leverages her extensive background in driving innovation and executing global transformation strategies in institutional banking. Her demonstrated expertise in emerging technologies—from AI-powered payment monitoring to blockchain exploration—positions her to advance Barclays' transaction banking modernization agenda, while her institutional knowledge of payment ecosystem partnerships and regulatory collaboration could accelerate the adoption of real-time, open-banking infrastructure across Europe.