A graduate of  Westminster University, he started his career at Zenith Media London as  a TV Buyer in 1988. Four years later he established Zenith Media in Poland, and later became Zenith’s Central and Eastern Europe Regional Media Director, with a remit covering 13 countries. He left Zenith in 1998 to establish and become General Manager of WPP’s MindShare in Warsaw.

Following Mindshare he became Managing  Director of Adnet, an online sales house. When he left in 2001, Adnet had grown from 34 sites, to representing more than 120, and had a market share of over 23%.

In 2002 he came to Turkey to set up Optimum Media Direction, (OMD) which in less than three years became Turkey’s largest advertising media buying company; by 2006 OMD was managing more than $200 million in client advertising money, and was employing 140 people across two companies in two locations. OMD was also the first Turkish advertising agency to win Gold at the Cannes Advertising Festival, the world’s premier advertising creativness showcase. He was a Jury member of the first Feils Awards in 2005

In the last five years Ivan has been a Board Member of Refresh the Venue and Youth Republic, and an Exceutive Director of Farazad Investments,a boutique investment bank.

During his time in advertising he has worked with hundreds of clients, across all sectors, and some of the largest advertisers in the world and Turkey, including; Proctor and Gamble, Unilever, Kraft, Ford, IBM, Microsoft, Renault, PepsiCo, Toyota, Nissan, Mercedes, Nike, Dior, Yapı Kredi, Akbank, Ülker, İstikbal, Petrol Ofisi, Arçelik, Beko and Migros