Born in Istanbul into a multilingual family, the Swiss-Turkish psychologist Onur Yavuz was raised between Istanbul and Zurich. After graduating from the full-time high-school program of the Istanbul University State Conservatory in 1999, and resettling in Zurich with his parents, he studied at the Zurich University of the Arts (ZHdK, then Hochschule Musik und Theater Zürich), graduating in 2002.

Following junior classical ballet engagements across major European troupes, where he trained and performed under famous choreographers Heinz Spoerli (Zurich) and Maurice Béjart (Lausanne), he decided in 2006 to pursue a scientific discipline for a long-term career path. He studied for a BSc in Psychology alongside an additional major in Business Administration (University of Zurich and FHNW), with a minor in VC Entrepreneurship and Technology (ETH Zürich). Subsequently, he completed his master’s degree in psychology at the University of Zurich in 2013. Academically, he focused on quantitative research methods, leadership, and power dynamics, with MSc research in behavioral-economic decision-making based on an original experimental design.”

From 2009 onwards, he gained early management career experience at various Zurich City project offices and a globally leading psychometric talent-solutions company. Later in 2013, he joined a globally top-30 influence-ranked think tank operating in the political-economic sphere, where he designed and reviewed statistically driven, evidence-based strategy projects on democratization, security policy, and economic development. In parallel, between 2015 and 2016, he served as Head of Psychological Counseling and psychologist for youth and families at a successful social enterprise in Zurich.

In October 2016, he assumed his first corporate career position as a Digital Product Manager for Connected Car & Aftersales UX technologies at the world’s most iconic car manufacturer in Stuttgart, Germany. Responsible for dual-region product implementation in Eastern Europe (Istanbul-based) and Australia-Pacific (based in Melbourne VIC), he divided his tenure between the two continents while also authoring big-data psychometrics and behavioral-economics-driven business-ecosystem optimization concepts for the Stuttgart HQ.

In 2018, he joined the global strategy team as a corporate strategist and strategic-projects manager at the Group CEO / Chairman of the Board Office in Stuttgart-Untertürkheim. Focused on the passenger-car business and long-term corporate positioning, his subsequent four years encompassed top-tier strategic management, industrial, geopolitical, and market forecasting, corporate development, and transformation advisory, with direct cooperation across all Group CxO offices and a key role in preparing Board of Management submissions for Supervisory Board approval.

He engaged and steered a wide range of leaders in strategic decision-making committees covering product, brand, business portfolios, and future-mobility initiatives such as electrification, connectivity, and autonomous driving, as well as leading in-depth analyses on socioeconomic shifts reshaping the global West in contrast to China’s long-term national strategy for economic, technological, and geopolitical expansion across key industries and supply-chain systems.

From 2018 to 2020, he assumed an extended thought-leadership role in co-creating the current Group Strategy, authoring a series of core long-term decision-making and stress-testing instruments that informed ExCom and C-suite deliberations and underpinned multibillion-euro strategic decisions. During this period, within the scope of the same transformation program, he was additionally responsible for developing and driving two strategic-planning projects, each addressing key future-technology choices with multibillion-euro budgetary and impact scope up to final approval. He also co-developed multiple strategy updates for the Group’s global institutional investors between 2020 and 2023.

In 2022, following his substantial contributions to brand development and limited-editions strategies, he was appointed to refine and lead the worldwide implementation of the Group’s large-scale top-end brand strategy programs. Upon their successful completion, he assumed in 2024 the strategic leadership to develop a further exclusive, signature brand of the Group and implement it as a new global strategic business portfolio, encompassing unique company assets, established operational processes, and an extensive development-program landscape of expansion and launch initiatives under his responsibility, which remains his current full-time occupation. His strategic-management tenure since 2018 has also seen the systematic application of his psychological expertise in executive moderation, and counseling settings.

More recently, he brought his long-standing psychological consultation and strategy advisory practice into the virtual sphere under the EPISTEMIST boutique brand, aiming to make evidence-based, high-integrity counseling accessible to a global audience.

He holds professional certifications from Prosci® (Change Management) and SHL Talent Solutions (OPQ32, Verify, and CBI assessment systems), with further professional qualifications from Erasmus University (Advanced Valuation & Strategy: M&A, Venture Capital & Private Equity), Duke Corporate Education (Agile Strategy), the University of Geneva (Investment Management), and the Duke University Pratt School of Engineering (AI Product Management).