Steering Council

Gökhan is a Certified Customer Experience Professional (CCXP). He is the first and the only CCXP in Turkey, one of the 1000 in the world. He is founder and leads the Customer Experience Professionals Association (CXPA) Istanbul Network since 2018. Also he’s selected as 2020 Board of Directors of CXPA, which has 4000 members from 70 countries. He’s a jury member and chair of judges in prestigious customer experience awards such as International CX Awards and UK CX Awards.

He’s the winner of “2019 CX Impact Awards” and selected as “2019 Top 25 CX Leader of The Year” and “2020 Top 150 Global Thought Leader and Influencer”. He worked as a CX practitioner in Telecom, Banking and Energy sectors for almost 10 years. Currently, he works as Customer Experience Advisor at Pisano. He’s writing articles for Harvard Business Review Turkey, CX Magazine and CX Network. He is a part time lecturer at MEF University and gives Customer Experience Management courses. He’s an international keynote speaker and gives training and consultancy to companies for better customer experiences.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/gokhankaracx/

Sinem Yuksel is a director with a professional experience of 9 years in banking and 13 years in telecommunications sectors. Skilled in CX strategy leadership, CX management, CX and Digital transformation leadership, digital channels management, human-centric design methodologies, sales force excellence and business planning. She’s also a member of the « Women on Board » Development Program YKKD, « Women in Technology » Association, Wtech Talent Development & Training Committee and the Judging Committee @ International Customer Experience Awards Association.

Serdar is the Chief Customer Experience Officer & Executive Board Member at Sodexo. Before joining Sodexo, he served as the founder and CEO of fiyuu, an experience-oriented on-demand digital delivery platform in Turkey. Throughout his career, he has held several leadership positions such as Delivery Business Director of TAB Food Investments (the largest integrated quick-service restaurant business in Turkey), Customer Experience Director of Turkcell Superonline (Turkey’s largest fiber-optic company), and various managerial roles at Turkcell Group (Turkey’s well-known telecom operator and only Turkish company listed on NYSE).
He graduated from Istanbul University with a degree in Business Administration, and he holds a Master’s degree in Psychology. 

Erdem Sağlamer is the Customer Management Director at Allianz. He has 13 years of Customer Experience Management experience in telecommunication and insurance sectors. Throughout his career he worked for leading brands such as Turkcell and Allianz.

He has deep knowledge on CX Strategy, Loyalty Management, Design Thinking, Digital & CX Culture Transformation, Digital Channels Management,Innovation, CX Journey & Analytic and OperationalExcellence and Business Development.  He is 6 Sigma Black Belt and he is attending both national and international summits as a speaker.

He is an Industrial Engineer and holds a MBA degree. Also he completed educational programs at Southern New Hampshire University, Istanbul Bilgi University, The Wharton School, Rice University and IMD Business School. 

Having a background of marketing management, Mustafa has specialized on customer experience and brand management. He provided brand and communication management consultancy services to Turkish companies from Textile, Tourism and Construction industries. Starting from 2013 he worked at Turkish Airlines Brand Management department where he coordinated projects regarding brand strategy, valuation and corporate identity. In 2015 he moved to Customer Experience domain within the airline. With his team comprising data analysts, engineers, designers and specialists he is coordinating experience research, design and improvement initiatives on more than 90 customer touchpoints of Turkish Airlines.

Kaan Varnali, Ph.D., is a Professor of Marketing, a researcher, and a business consultant with a dual specialization on customer experience design and marketing communications in digital environments. He teaches online graduate-level courses on consumer psychology, branding, advanced research methods at Istanbul Bilgi University. Throughout his career, he has conducted research in various organizational settings ranging from major retail banks and multinational corporations to digital start-ups, deploying both quantitative and qualitative methodologies, mainly in the EMEA region. He has published more than 20 scientific articles in top-tier international academic journals and authored four books. He also has vast experience in consultancy and corporate training.

He graduated from Bilkent University, Department of Business Administration in 2001. Received his MBA degree from Case Western Reserve University, Weatherhead School of Management, OH. He led the strategy and planning department at Grey Istanbul advertising agency and was a member of the global strategy council of Grey Group Worldwide. He was one of the 12 strategists who led the global strategy council. He won multiple Golden Effie awards. He left Grey in 2012 and founded FutureBright Group of Companies. He founded ZMET Institute in 2016 and became the ninth global partner of Olson Zaltman & Associates.

After completing his undergraduate studies in Electronical Engineering, Turan pursued his graduate studies in Business. In 2000, he became a founding member of Infomag Yayıncılık. In 2005, he took part in the forming of Businessweek Türkiye.

Turan, who also took part in the forming of Harvard Business Review Türkiye, is the chief editor for Bloomberg BusinessWeek Türkiye and Harvard Business Review Türkiye.

Sinem Yılmaz, a graduate of Galatasaray High School, earned her bachelor’s degree in International Relations & Affairs at Galatasaray University, followed by an MBA at Bilgi University along with a degree she got from University of Paris I Panthéon-Sorbonne in International Relations & Affairs. Having started her career in 2004 as Credit Card Product Assistant Manager at Akbank, Yılmaz held various executive positions in almost all areas of marketing at companies like Turkcell, Multinet and Total. As of 2018, she was assigned as Head of Marketing, Customer Experience and Passenger Services at Istanbul Airport, where she has been in charge for end-to-end management of marketing processes ever since. Yılmaz is married and a mother to one and has good command of the French and English languages.

Neil is the founder and CEO of Awards International which is an organisation that is running business awards and conferences and other events and we are now starting to offer these services to other businesses. Awards International like to break the mould if we can in the interest of providing customers what they want. Neil has now 30 year career and since he has worked with a few very large successful multinational across many disciplines, he likes to think he knows a thing or two about business. Neil is always looking for ways he can collaborate with or help other business people in the UK or other countries to our mutual benefit.

Ivana’s main goal is to plan the company's activities and set goals that are delivering Awards International's growth. She believes that great work and business results should be rewarded. That is why her decision is to organise business awards which are acknowledged both by her colleagues and customers.