She is the former CEO of Greystone & Co Inc, a New York-based national real estate finance company in the seniors housing industry.
She also was a board member at Tiffany & Co and a director at Marsh & Mclennan Cos Inc.[2] She was born in Istanbul, Turkey in 1979,[3][4] to an engineer father and a mother who taught mathematics and physics.
[6] She graduated from Istanbul High School[7] and enrolled at Boğaziçi University's (BOUN) Department of Industrial engineering in 1997, graduatimg as valedictorian with a BSc in 2001.
[7] In 2005 she joined Goldman Sachs as an associate, and was named managing director and Head of Financial Institutions Group Analytics and Strategies in 2011.
[15][16] After the re-election of Recep Tayyip Erdoğan in May 2023 and the appointment of Mehmet Şimşek as the new Minister of Finance, the media reported that Central Bank governor Şahap Kavcıoğlu would be replaced by Erkan.
[17] On 8 June 2023, Erkan became the governor by a presidential decree by Erdoğan, becoming the first female head of the Turkish Central Bank.
[21] In late 2023 Erkan told a local newspaper that house prices in Istanbul are higher than Manhattan, so she chose to move in with her parents.