Abdülkadir Çay graduated from the Department of Public Administration at the Faculty of Economics and Administrative Sciences, Sakarya University in 2000. In the same year, he started his master’s degree in Management and Organization at the Department of Social Sciences at the School of Business Administration, Gebze Institute of Technology, presently known as Gebze Technical University. During the same period, he excelled as an expert in foreign trade in the private sector. Çay represented Turkey for 13 years, traveling extensively across 25 countries. Concurrently, he worked as a coordinator in restructuring processes and numerous projects carried out by the companies that employed him. Çay has been involved in the activities of different NGOs since his high school years. In 2013, during the restructuring process, he was appointed as general manager by SETA Foundation's Board of Directors. Çay is the first person appointed to this position at SETA.