From ESEI Student to ESEI Professor: The Story of Cem Gorer

In 2019, Cem Gorer arrived at ESEI International Business School as a master’s student from Istanbul. Five years later, he was standing in front of a classroom at the same school as one of its youngest professors.

A Background Built on Teaching and Selling

Cem grew up in Istanbul in a family of musicians. While studying engineering at university in Turkey, he was also teaching Turkish folklore, dance and music to children as young as three years old. Teaching was never a side activity for him. It was always part of who he was.

After deciding he wanted to pursue a master’s degree in an international environment, he found his way to ESEI through word of mouth. A friend was graduating from the school and recommended it. He enrolled in the Master in Business Management in 2019, graduating in 2020 as part of a cohort that finished its second semester entirely online due to Covid-19.

Five Years in Sales Across Europe

After graduating, Cem built a career in B2B sales that has taken him across multiple industries and markets. He began in enterprise sales at Veritas Technologies, before joining SAP as part of the customer experience portfolio team, specialising in e-commerce, customer data platforms, marketing automation, Sales Cloud and service cloud. He then moved to Preply, a mid-market technology company, and is currently leading outbound business development at Delfos Energy, a scale-up where he works with clients across European markets.

More than five years of working across enterprise, mid-market and startup environments has given him a perspective on sales and customer experience that is grounded in real commercial practice, not theory.

How He Became a Professor

In 2024, he saw a LinkedIn post from a fellow ESEI alumni, Julia Im, sharing that the university was looking for someone to teach customer experience. It felt like a natural fit. The combination of his ESEI background and his sales experience in the customer experience space made him a strong candidate. He applied, and he got the role.

He became a professor at ESEI at the age of 29, making him one of the youngest members of the faculty. “I shared the same stage with the professors that taught me,” he says. “I am very proud.”

What He Brings to the Classroom

Cem is direct about what his course is and is not. “I’m not a marketing guy,” he tells his students. “Originally, I would say 60 to 65 percent is sales and the rest is marketing that we share the same content, such as customer acquisition, lifetime value and so on.” His honesty is deliberate. What he teaches comes from where he has been, and he wants students to know that.

His third year teaching has seen the course evolve. In his first year, students chose their own companies to study. In his second year, the projects were aligned with the university. This year, students are delivering a tailored report for ESEI itself. The progression reflects his belief in the value of project-based learning as a model that goes beyond content delivery.

“The project is showing how much deeper they can go in terms of knowledge,” he explains. “Plus they go on stage, they deliver, they express their feelings, they use body language. We analyse what you prepared, the content, the quality of presentations, the body language, how you present, are you reading or are you leading the team?”

He also teaches Sales Management to bachelor students and applies a similarly practical approach, adapting his methods to suit the level and the context.

To explain why project-based learning matters at master’s level, he references Bloom’s Taxonomy, the educational framework that moves from remembering and understanding at the foundational level through to applying, analysing, evaluating and creating. “Project-based learning is sitting for application and analysis,” he says. “You have to take it.”

What ESEI Gave Him Before He Gave It Back

Looking back on his time as a student, Cem is honest about how much the experience shaped him. He arrived in Barcelona at 24, shy about speaking English in front of international people, navigating an entirely new environment far from his family.

“Barcelona is an international hub. If you want to work in those international companies, first you need to work with international students.” He sees the two as directly connected. In his current sales role, he works with clients across EMEA every day. The ability to read different cultures and collaborate across them is not something he learned from a textbook.

He also speaks warmly about the faculty he encountered as a student and has stayed connected with since. “I understood the quality of the professor from ESEI after I graduated,” he says. “There are so many senior leaders in the faculty that are still coaching me.”

His Advice: Make Some Noise

Ask Cem for advice and he does not hold back. His message to students is straightforward.

“No one is going to give you what you want. You have to take it. I phoned universities, I phoned decision makers, I introduced myself, I said, do you think I can be valuable for your team? If you sit, no one is going to come to you. If you know what you want, make some noise. Don’t be afraid.”

He is equally direct about what a degree actually is. “Don’t see university only as a place where you get your degree. This is not a good mindset. It is the beginning of the road. This is not the end of the road.”

What Is Next

Cem’s journey does not stop here. He has recently been accepted into the Executive DBA programme at EADA Business School, delivered in partnership with Le CNAM Paris, with a Merit Scholarship. His research will explore the intersection of sales strategy and organisational growth, specifically when and how B2B companies need to restructure their sales systems as they scale, and what go-to-market and revenue operations interventions drive successful transitions.

For a professor who teaches from the front line of sales and who has built his career across enterprise, mid-market and startup environments, the doctoral programme is a natural next step. It reflects the same conviction that has guided him since arriving in Barcelona: that education and real-world practice are most powerful when they work together.