Öztürk said her desire to pursue climate studies first crystalized when she was in college at Bilkent University in Ankara, Turkey. "I studied international relations, and I made the connection between my family's background and what I was reading on fossil fuels and socio-environmental impacts," she noted.
After graduating with a degree in international relations, she served as an assistant policy advisor in New Zealand’s embassy in Turkey. When Turkey was hit with a devastating earthquake in 2023, she helped with UNICEF relief efforts.
These experiences led her to continue her studies at Yale’s Jackson School of Global Affairs. As a Fulbright scholar, she is focusing on policymaking at the intersection of environment protection and economic development. This summer, Öztürk interned at Climate Action Campaign DC, where she analyzed federal climate investments, looking specifically at how public investment drives private capital. She also worked on climate communication, providing stakeholders with guidance on how to link constituents’ struggles with health issues and cooling/heating costs and insurance costs to extreme weather events caused by climate change.
While studying at Yale, Öztürk has become especially intrigued by nature-based solutions to climate change, such as reforestation, carbon sequestration, and restoring biodiversity. Going forward, she would like to focus on implementing these solutions via the governmental and industry sectors.
"Nature itself provides so many solutions to the problem, but it's a question of, 'How do we transform the system using these solutions?' " Öztürk said.