Born in 1975, Itır Bağdadi completed her high school education at the prestigious Bornova Anatolian High School, and later went on to pursue her undergraduate degree in Communication Arts at St. John’s University (SJU) in New York. Upon acquiring a B.S. from SJU, she later went on to acquire an MBA from the New York Institute of Technology in General Management in 1996, becoming one of the youngest MBAs to graduate from the Institution. During this time Itır Bağdadi worked as an investment advisor and later investment banker at some of the top financial institutions in New York such as Morgan Stanley, Chase Manhattan Bank and JPMorgan. Itır began her PhD studies in Political Science at the City University of New York Graduate Center and is currently a PhD Candidate working on her dissertation entitled “A Comparison of Capital and Coercion at Elite Disposal in the State-Building Processes of Azerbaijan and Armenia”. In 2002, Itır Bagdadi began working as a Lecturer at the Izmir University of Economics International Relations and the European Union department and continues to do research at this institution on international political economy, post-Soviet politics, and gender politics. As of 2012, she is also the Director of the Izmir University of Economics Gender and Women’s Studies Research and Application Center.