Instructors
Akan Abdula
He was born in Skopje, Macedonia, in December 1978. He graduated from Bilkent University in Istanbul with a degree in Business Administration. He received his MBA from the Weatherhead School of Management at Case Western Reserve University. He worked for many years as a research director at Millward Brown. He has 17 years of experience in advertising, marketing strategy, brand management, and market research. He served as head of the Strategy and Planning department at an advertising agency in Türkiye and as a member of the Grey Group Worldwide global strategy council. He was among the 12 strategists who led the global council. He served on the Advertising Self-Regulatory Board and served on the Red, Felis, and Effie jury. He has received numerous Gold Effie awards, including for Türkiye’s best product launch and most effective social responsibility campaigns. He personally consults for Türkiye’s largest brands. He teaches Consumer Behavior at Bilgi University’s Brand School. The Daily Telegraph has reported on his strategic approaches.
Başak Abdula
Born in Istanbul in 1979, she graduated from Boğaziçi University with a degree in Sociology. She then earned an MBA from Galatasaray University. She worked as a consumer insights specialist at global research companies. She is a founding partner of FutureBright Research and ZMET Institute Turkey, and a member of the Board of Directors of BÜMED.
Burcu Onar
Following her undergraduate studies in Industrial Engineering at Galatasaray University, she completed her master’s degree in Business Administration at the same university. After working as a research specialist and research manager at global research companies, she served as the Director of Marketing & Customer Intelligence at Philips Design headquarters in the Netherlands. In recent years, she has worked as a project consultant, primarily on segmentation, brand architecture, and marketing mix management projects in various countries and sectors.
Doris Cemel
Graduated from Istanbul Bilgi University with a double major in Sociology and Advertising. She completed her Master’s degree in Strategic Marketing and Brand Management at Bahçeşehir University. During the rise of digital marketing, she participated in various certification programs in social media and digital marketing. She has 10+ years of research, brand, and product management experience. She joined FutureBright in May 2017 and is a founding partner of FutureBright Academy.
Ebru Özdemir Taşdiken
Formerly an academic, she holds a master’s degree in Industrial Engineering from Boğaziçi University. Following experience in product management and strategic planning in advertising, she has worked in the research sector since 2008, managing both qualitative and quantitative research methods. She specializes in advertising testing and unconscious research. Since September 2020, she has served as Deputy General Manager of the Qualitative Research Department at FutureBright Group and General Manager of ZMET Institute Türkiye.
Gizem Ateş Yalçın
After graduating from Ankara Private Tevfik Fikret French High School, she traveled to France to study Economics and Business Administration at the University of Strasbourg. Her career, which began as a banker in Akbank’s International Banking department, shifted direction when she moved into the communications and marketing sector. For over eight years, she worked as a Brand Strategist for major network agencies and global and local brands. In 2022, she joined the Behavior Institute team at FutureBright Group’s strategic planning company as Creative Strategy Manager.
She is also a certified Creative Drama Leader. She designs high-impact and inspirational corporate training programs on her areas of expertise, combining globally recognized thinking methods with creative drama techniques. She believes it’s possible to look at the same place and see different things, and that everyone can do this.
Güneş Can
She graduated from Istanbul Science High School and the Department of Management Engineering at Istanbul Technical University. She earned her doctorate in 2010 from the University of Groningen in the Netherlands for her work on marketing analytics and models. Her doctoral dissertation, “Marketing Direct du E-Commerce,” was selected as the best doctoral dissertation of the year in Europe by VAD France in the fields of e-marketing, e-commerce, multi-media, and multi-channel marketing, earning her the Golden Cube award. In 2012, she won the best paper award in Media Planning Research at the ANZMAC conference in Australia, organized by the Australia and New Zealand Marketing Academy and the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute.
Since 2013, she has been a professor and Program Director of data science/analytics at Amsterdam Business School and a visiting professor at Politecnico Milano and Bologna Universities in Italy.
Her core areas of expertise include artificial intelligence (AI), Big Data Analytics, photo, video, and text analytics, mobile, online, and multi-channel customer experience analytics, behavioral, motivational, and experience-based customer segmentation models, large dataset analysis, marketing/media mix, and ROMI (return to market) models. During her years in the Netherlands and academia, she consulted on numerous projects in Turkey, the Netherlands, France, and the UK in areas such as finance, banking, technology and mobile telecommunications, e-commerce, mobile commerce retail, and FMCG.
Her work has been published in international journals such as Harvard Business Review, Journal of Retailing, Journal of Interactive Marketing, International Journal of Research in Marketing, International Journal of Electronic Commerce, and Direct Marketing.
Pınar Kocabıyıkoğlu
Born in Ankara in 1980, Pınar completed her Psychology degree at METU and her master’s degree in Social Psychology at METU. She worked as a consumer insights specialist at global research companies. She is the founding partner of FutureBright Research and ZMET Institute Turkey.
Prof. Dr. Umut Konuş
He graduated from Istanbul Science High School and the Department of Management Engineering at Istanbul Technical University. He earned his doctorate in 2010 from the University of Groningen in the Netherlands for his work on marketing analytics and models. His doctoral dissertation, “Marketing Direct du E-Commerce,” was selected as the best doctoral dissertation of the year in Europe by VAD France in the fields of e-marketing, e-commerce, multi-media, and multi-channel marketing, earning him the Golden Cube award. In 2012, he won the best paper award in Media Planning Research at the ANZMAC conference in Australia, organized by the Australia and New Zealand Marketing Academy and the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute.
Since 2013, he has been a professor and Program Director of data science/analytics at Amsterdam Business School and a visiting professor at the Politecnico di Milano and Bologna Universities in Italy.
His core areas of expertise include artificial intelligence (AI), Big Data Analytics, photo, video, and text analytics, mobile, online, and multi-channel customer experience analytics, behavioral, motivational, and experience-based customer segmentation models, large dataset analysis, marketing/media mix, and ROMI (return to market) models. During his years in the Netherlands and academia, he consulted on numerous projects in Turkey, the Netherlands, France, and the UK in areas such as finance, banking, technology and mobile telecommunications, e-commerce, mobile commerce retail, and FMCG.
His work has been published in international journals such as Harvard Business Review, Journal of Retailing, Journal of Interactive Marketing, International Journal of Research in Marketing, International Journal of Electronic Commerce, and Direct Marketing.