About Imdat Celeste

About Imdat Celeste Solak (They/Them)

Portrait Photo of Imdat CelesteImdat Celeste was born in Central Turkey in a small village in 1969. In hindsight, being born in such a dirt poor environment and country in a time of turmoil seems godsend: this way they had an opportunity to experience good and bad management first-hand – whether it be in for-profit or not-for-profit organizations.

Imdat Celeste experienced the growth of Turkish society from the stage of a developing to emerging to near-developed country first-hand. This shaped their overall view of the importance of free markets.

In 1979, they moved to Western Germany (West Berlin) and lived most of their time in Germany, experiencing, again, the German unification first-hand. In 2009, they moved to New York City to work for Nokia as Vice President of Nokia’s AppStore. In 2015, Imdat Celeste permanently moved to the wonderful city of Munich, Bavaria (Germany).

Starting their career as a software engineer, Imdat Celeste continued a long journey to become an effective manager in software and digital media and worked as manager (up to EVP position) between 1998 and 2019. During their career they managed teams from five people to over 500 people in their organizations.

In February 2020 they decided to switch back to their first professional love: Software Engineering.

Imdat Celeste today lives in Munich, Bavaria, Germany, and spends most of their time developing software as freelance software engineer. Among their main projects are:

  • ginlo: the only secure messenger written and operated in Germany;
  • netfiles mobile client: A mobile client for the netfiles data room for Android and iOS;
  • katip: a audio recordings transcription software for macOS

In 2023 they decided to choose an additional name and added “Celeste” as middle-name to their existing “Imdat” reflecting their non-binaryness (enbyness), thus calling themselves “Imdat Celeste Solak” (Imdat C. Solak or I. Celeste Solak, for short).

You can find Imdat Celeste’s profile on GitHub, or Fediverse as @ics@tau-ceti.space.

They also are admin of the Mastodon instance for the Anarresti.

Leave a Reply