Mustafa Kemal Abadan is a Founding Partner at Turkish Philanthropy Funds and currently serves as the Co-Vice Chair. Mr. Abadan is a design partner in the architectural firm Skidmore Owings and Merrill LLP (SOM). He designed SOM’s first completed commercial buildings in Japan, Hong Kong, Singapore, Philippines, Brazil, Chile, and Kazakhstan. Mr. Abadan has served more than 15 years as a lecturer at architecture schools, including Cornell University, Harvard’s Graduate School of Design, and Columbia University’s Graduate School of Architecture. As the Chairman of the SOM Foundation since 2005, he raised the profile of the annual Student Traveling Fellowships. He has served as a selection panelist for the Paul and Daisy Soros Fellowships for New Americans since 2000.

Numerous organizations and institutions have recognized Mr. Abadan’s contribution to architecture with awards and honors, including the American Institute of Architects, Chicago Athenaeum, Progressive Architecture, Metropolis, and the Architectural Review. In addition, his projects were featured at the Venice and São Paolo Architecture Biennales, at the Skyscraper Museum and Center for Architecture in New York, the New York Public Library, and at a recent exhibition in Tokyo featuring SOM’s current work.

Mr. Abadan was raised and educated in Turkey, Germany, and the United States. As an undergraduate student in Cornell University’s Architecture program (Bachelor of Architecture, 1982), he won the Art Gensler Award for Design Excellence and the Eschweiler Prize for Scholastic Excellence in Design, formulating the foundations for his modernist architectural convictions. As a graduate student pursuing his Master of Architecture in Urban Design, Mr. Abadan studied with Colin Rowe. He exhibited an early predilection for the urban projects that would later define his career.