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 senior director with a demonstrated professional experience of working in the finance and telecommunications industry. Skilled in CX Strategy Leadership, Customer Experience Management, CX and Digital Transformation Leadership, Digital Channels Management, Design Thinking Methodologies, Sales Force Excellence and Business Planning. She is a member of “YKKD” (Women On Board Association) Development Program and Women In Technology Platform.

Serdar is the CX Director at Sodexo Turkey. 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 CX 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. 

Emel Çuhacı is an Ankara University graduate from the Political Science Faculty. Starting her business career at Akbank in 2000, she carried on with Oyak Bank and Yapı Kredi. After her role in Yapı Kredi as the Self Service Banking & Cross Channel Coordination Director, she took a different role in top management in IT sector.

Meanwhile, she supported her interests and studies on customer experience with neuroscience which she also completed a master program on neuromarketing in Hamburg Media School. Together with the experiences she gained from the 16 years of her working life, she did studies on the effective usage of neuroscience on working life and established LeadNeuro, a neuromarketing agency. She did neuro researches, wrote articles, organised trainings in companies and did many keynote speeches all around the world to explain the customers’ brain decision mechanism. By the end of 2017, in addition to her existing career as a customer neuro behavorial profesional at LeadNeur, she began to serve as Senior Advisor for Ernst & Young, focusing on banking. Keeping her existing roles, she joined EFMA as a Senior Advisor and Turkey country manager by the beginning of 2018.

Emel Çuhacı, decided to carry on her career at Yapı Kredi Bank as the Innovation & Customer Experience Director, as of July 2018, to benefit her deep studies on customer experience in the latest years.

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. Currently, he proudly provides executive leadership to 4PLAY Mobile Creative People.

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.