ESRAG Chair (2024-25)
Rotary Club of Monterey Cannery Row
California, USA

Yavuz Atila joined the Environmental Sustainability Rotary Action Group (ESRAG) in August 2019. He was elected to the ESRAG board in June 2022 and served as the membership chair for 2023-24 term. He was the ESRAG Western North America (Big West) Regional Chapter chair between April 2020 – June 2023 with 36 Rotary Districts in the Zones 26/27 and Western part of Zone 28. He organized the Rotary Ecology Day Online Conference on November 2021, to celebrate Rotary’s November 1st Ecology Day declared in 1990.

He is a member of the Citizen’s Climate Lobby chapter in Monterey and a leader in the Climate Reality Leadership Corps. He’s made over 60 presentations to the Rotary clubs about “The Environment: Rotary’s New Area of Focus and ESRAG”.

Yavuz is the current member, founder, and the Charter President of the Rotary Club of Monterey Cannery Row since October 2011. He joined Rotary in April 2005 as a member of the Rotary Club of Monterey Peninsula Sunrise and served as the club President in 2010-11 and Assistant Governor in 2011-12. He served as the District 5230 Governor in the Central Coast of California in 2016-17, the District Trainer for 2017-2018, and the District Rotary Leadership Institute (RLI) chair for the 2017-2020 terms. Yavuz founded the Rotary clubs of Silicon Valley STAR in 2009 and Carmel Sunset in 2017.

Yavuz was born in the Black Sea region town of Duragan, Sinop in Türkiye. He graduated from the Turkish Naval Academy in Istanbul in August 1984. During his 8-year Turkish Navy officer career, he served on Turkish frigates that operated in the Black Sea and Mediterranean Sea. In December 1990, he received his M.S. degree from the U.S. Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey. He worked as the Information Systems Director for the Center for Nonproliferation Studies at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies in Monterey for 12 years. Yavuz is the President/CEO of his company, Monterey Bay Technologies, Inc. since 2003; providing Information Technology solutions, database applications, sales, and services to small to mid-size businesses and organizations.

Yavuz is married to Nurten Atila, who is a Rotarian since 1998, a charter member and the 2020-21 president of the Rotary Club of Carmel Sunset, and an ESRAG member. Yavuz and Nurten both support the Rotary Foundation as Major Donors and Bequest Society members, multiple Paul Harris Fellows, and Sustaining Members. They have two adult daughters, Merve and Ekin, and both of them are Paul Harris Fellows.