#15 MURAT GÜZEL
Güzel is the first Turkish-American to be a Democratic Party delegate to nominate a candidate for President of United States. The presidential campaign selected its 153 district level delegates and 14 alternates. Guzel was one of 301 delegates who went to the 2012 Democratic National Convention.
Murat Güzel.
The Fırst Turkısh-Amerıcan Delegate To Nomınate A Candıdate for Presıdent of the U.S. G Murat Güzel is the first
Turkish-American to be a Democratic Party delegate to nominate a candidate for President of United States. 34 • TurkofAmerica
raduated from Hacettepe University in Ankara as an electronic engineer, he taught at Hacettepe University for two years. Murat Güzel was one of eight students who came to the US with government scholarships. After his a master and PhD study at Washington state’s Lehigh University, he also taught courses in engineering. His professional life continued with a wireless communication company in different positions from engineer manager to general manager. Finally he started up his own business adventure in 2000.
The Bethlehem region has four Democratic Party delegates and Guzel is one of them. “I wasn’t expecting to be a delegate and I did not even ask or work for it. After having good relations with local elected officials and Senator Bob Casey, he recommended me to be one of four delegates to the Democratic Party and it happened.” Güzel was officially a Democratic Party delegate in June 2012. He voted and signed under the name of President Obama as the nominated candidate along with the other members of the delegation in Charlotte, and then President Obama gave an acceptance speech as the Democratic Party’s candidate for the US Presidency. After the election, he received an dinner invitation to Los Angles and then an invitation to the White House, too. When asked whether he is considering a political career, he smiles and replies, “I haven’t had any plans up to now and this happened. Together, I don’t have any plan but we don’t know what the future will bring. But we have an obligation to our culture, our society and the country we live in” Murat Guzel, CEO of Nimeks organic/Natural Food Source Inc, has been in the food and juice business since 2000. He started with importing juice concentrates from Turkey for US juice makers and then he decided to build his own brand, “Smart Juice”, in 2008. Smart Juice is now on sale in over 2500 supermarkets all over the US, upscale supermarkets such as The Fresh Market, Wegmans, Whole Foods, Shop Rite, A&P, Stop&Shop, Big Y, Shaws, Harmons, and Sprouts, Bristol farms. They just started with some division of Kroger, America’s largest supermarket chain of 3600 stores. Smart Juice has seven different warehouses in the country and they ship directly from warehouses to distributors. Since he partnered with Nimeks Tarım of İzmir, they import approximately 700-800 containers of dried foods and fruits, frozen fruits and juice concentrates every year from Turkey and this makes them one of the biggest food import companies from Turkey. Guzel’s companies, Nimeks Organic/Natural Food Source and Kervan USA LLC, are based in Bethlehem, PA. He has lived and worked in the same town since he moved to the US in 1986.