A day with Derya Coruh-Özvatan, Client Director
at IBM iX

Spend a day alongside Derya and it quickly becomes clear how many threads come together in her role. She joined IBM iX in 2020 and today supports clients across the entire relationship, from initial conversations and proposals to negotiations, ongoing collaboration and the strategic development of their accounts. She didn’t set out with this destination in mind. If anything, her path shows that a career doesn’t always have to follow a fixed plan. Derya has taken on responsibility step by step, picked up new topics along the way and shaped her role herself in the process. She started out in the Project Management Office (PMO) and project controlling, where she first got to know projects from an operational and commercial perspective. How are they planned? Where do the risks lie? What does a project need to work, both organisationally and financially? 

That knowledge still serves her today. Over time, new responsibilities followed: client relationships, new business, negotiations and the strategic development of accounts. For Derya, her journey shows that not every next step has to be mapped out from the start. Sometimes it comes from taking on responsibility when the opportunity arises. What runs through every stage is her interest in people, in communication and in the points where different perspectives meet. So a day with Derya shows not only what Client Services means at IBM iX. It also shows how important it is to stay close to clients, work with interdisciplinary teams and remain dependable, even when things get complicated. 

The Role of a Client Director at IBM iX

08:00 – Setting clear prioritities

Derya’s day usually begins with a coffee and a look at her calendar. It’s less about keeping as many appointments in her head as possible and more about knowing which topics really need her attention that day. As a Client Director, she has a lot going on at once: existing projects, new opportunities, proposals, negotiations and internal alignment. Then there are the topics nobody could have seen coming the evening before. That’s why Derya sets her priorities first thing. After all, not everything that looks urgent turns out to be important. 

09:00 – From steering meeting to the next opportunity

Mornings are often filled with client and project meetings. A steering meeting might be followed straight away by a catch-up with the delivery team, and after that the focus could shift to a new opportunity or a proposal negotiation. For Derya, this means being able to switch quickly between very different topics, and that’s exactly what she enjoys about her job. A working day spent on the same subject for eight hours straight probably wouldn’t suit her. Her role sits on a different level from that of the technical experts: Derya translates between the business, clients and delivery. She needs to understand which problem actually needs solving, what expertise that requires and which decisions have to be made to turn an idea into a viable solution 

11:00 – Flexibility is key

Between meetings, she turns to the tasks she set herself that morning: checking figures, preparing for a client meeting, reviewing a proposal or laying the groundwork for a decision. A fixed to-do list does not really work, because the working day is simply too dynamic. A phone call, a last-minute client request or an issue from a project can reshuffle the order within minutes. Derya knows this well by now. She starts the day with a plan, knowing full well that it may look quite different by mid-morning.

12:30 – Lunch and informal conversations

When Derya is in the office, she likes to head out for lunch with colleagues. She particularly values conversations that don’t have a specific purpose. Over lunch, you find out what others are working on, gain a fresh perspective on a topic or meet someone whose expertise might later prove valuable for a client. Derya enjoys connecting people and not necessarily with the idea that it has to lead straight to a business case. Sometimes it’s enough for her to think: these two should really meet. When she’s working from home, on the other hand, she tries to make her lunch break an actual break. She’ll eat something, pop outside for a bit or take care of a few personal errands. The main goal is to step away from the screen for a moment. 

14:00 – Developing accounts and proposals strategically

As a Client Director, Derya doesn’t only get involved once a project is up and running. She’s often there at a much earlier stage, whether in initial conversations, new opportunities, tenders or the development of a proposal. Her work therefore moves between different levels. It’s about commercial questions and negotiations, but just as much about what clients want to achieve strategically and how the internal team can support them. Proposal and negotiation phases in particular bring many aspects of her role together: client needs, the business case, team structure, commercial viability and the question of which solution will work for both sides in the long run.

The clients she works with come from a wide range of sectors, including retail, luxury, mobility and the public sector. They range from Swiss retailer Interdiscount to Berlin’s public transport operator BVG. Retail clients tend to focus more on commerce, customer experience, scaling and coordinating large delivery teams. In mobility, the emphasis is more on digital services, user needs and the evolution of core platforms. For Derya, working professionally with clients always means understanding their business and their specific challenge first. Only then does the question arise of which solution, which team and which setup really make sense.

16:00 – Short-notice decisions and challenging situations

Late afternoon sometimes brings the unexpected. A client request comes in. A team needs someone to bounce ideas off. Or a small issue suddenly turns into a bigger one. Derya doesn’t have to solve these situations alone. She sees her job more as quickly understanding what’s really going on and who needs to be involved. The same applies when things get difficult. For her, responsibility shows most when something doesn’t go to plan. In those moments, she doesn’t want to sidestep the issue. She wants to understand what happened, communicate openly and find a solution together with everyone involved.

Derya describes herself as ambitious and solution-oriented. When something isn’t working, she wants to understand why, but her focus quickly shifts to the next steps. At some point, the question always comes: “Okay, so how do we move forward?” At the same time, the human side matters to her. She listens, observes and tries to understand what the other person really needs. That doesn’t mean avoiding conflict. For her, clarity and empathy aren’t mutually exclusive. She doesn’t see herself as being solely on the client’s side, but deliberately as a mediator between both. She represents her clients’ interests within IBM iX while standing firmly behind her teams and she speaks up when expectations aren’t realistic.

18:00 – Growing her network and broadening her perspective

When the working day ends, Derya’s conversations don’t necessarily stop. Over the years, she has built a diverse network and is regularly invited as a guest to business, cultural, fashion, luxury and social events. She sees these invitations as a privilege, but also as the result of relationships that have grown over many years. She goes deliberately and not just to keep in touch with existing contacts. She’s genuinely interested in looking beyond her own professional world. Meeting people who run companies, work creatively or drive social change gives her new perspectives. Her understanding of networking has also changed along the way. For Derya, a good network isn’t about knowing as many people as possible. What matters is that relationships grow over time and that contact continues even when there’s no immediate business reason. 

What AI changes – and why people still make the final call

Artificial intelligence (AI) is an important topic for Derya too. She is less interested in the next new tool than in how AI is changing the way we work and what role people should continue to plan . When certain tasks can be done in seconds, a fundamental question arises for her: “If knowledge is becoming ever easier to access, what is it that still makes us genuinely good at our jobs?” Recently, a client asked her to explore how AI could be meaningfully integrated into an existing digital platform. Not as an add-on feature, but with concrete use cases in mind. Where does it genuinely help users? Which processes can be made smarter? And what’s needed, both technically and organisationally, to take it beyond a proof of concept? For an international luxury client, a similar question comes up from a different angle: how can AI support existing customer experience and marketing processes in an environment where personalisation, brand identity and the quality of every single customer interaction matter so much?

From a Client Director’s perspective, Derya finds these differences fascinating. There’s no such thing as an AI use case that can simply be copied from one client to the next. That’s why her work often starts with a fundamental question: what problem are we actually trying to solve? For Derya, judgement, empathy, creativity and the ability to see the bigger picture aren’t becoming less important as a result. Quite the opposite. She’s interested not just in what’s technically possible, but above all in where technology really makes a difference and where people still need to make the call. Derya also sees a limit to automation when it comes to trust. When a project gets difficult, clients ultimately want to speak to a person. That’s when it comes down to taking responsibility, talking openly and finding a solution together.

“Designing Tomorrow” starts with collaboration

Derya embodies the way IBM iX approaches Client Services: close to people, commercially grounded and built for the long term. She brings together what clients want to achieve strategically and what interdisciplinary teams can realistically deliver. What she still values most about IBM iX is how it brings different worlds together: the energy and creativity of a digital agency, combined with technological expertise and IBM’s international network. And, of course, the people she works with. Perhaps that’s also why the human factor matters so much to her. Technology is changing how we work. But for Derya, how people work together still determines whether a collaboration truly succeeds. That’s exactly where “Designing Tomorrow” becomes tangible in everyday work. 

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