Özlem Cekic

Özlem was born in Turkey in 1976. She lived in Finland for two years while her parents worked as cleaners at the Turkish Embassy in Helsinki. The family moved to Denmark in the beginning of the 1980s. Özlem was the first in her family to go to high school after which she completed a nursing education. She specialized as a psychiatric nurse and from 2000 to 2007 she worked with mentally ill children and youths, traumatized refugees and drug addicts. In 2003, she was elected to the board of the Danish Nurses Organisation as the first woman with an ethnic minority background. Özlem was elected to the Danish parliament and served from 2007 to 2015 as one of the first female politicians with an ethnic minority background. Since 2015, Özlem has been giving talks and providing advice in Denmark, and internationally, on how to build bridges between ethnic minorities, companies, organisations and local government. She devised the dialogue coffee concept, which involves her regularly holding dialogue coffee meetings, where she contacts people who have sent her hate mail and arranges to meet them for a coffee – usually at their home.

In 2018, she became only the second Dane in history to give a TED Talk, which was about her experiences with dialogue coffee. At present, the talk has been viewed by over a million people. Özlem is also the founder and chairwoman of the Bridge Builders’ Association (Foreningen Brobyggerne), which aims to prevent hate and violence. The Association teaches children about building bridges between different population groups, builds bridges between Jewish, Muslim and Christian schools, and seeks out religious extremists to invite them to open dialogue arrangements, which are hosted by the Association.

You can watch the TED Talk here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rQy4gPjUY-s&t=27s