Two decades leading Apple Retail — from the IFC Mall in Hong Kong to the Genius Bar in Palo Alto to the front door of Apple Park. Known inside Apple for moving cross-functional teams, and for the openings that set the standard.
Retail is where Apple's strategy becomes a person, a table, and a conversation. I have spent twenty years making sure that moment is worthy of the product.
iPad reached mainland China on September 17, 2010 — a launch the press called "soggy" for its quiet queues, and one Apple treated as the opening move in what would become its most important market outside the United States.
Baha was there on the floor, supporting Apple's Beijing retail team through the launch: translating a launch playbook built in Cupertino into something that worked in a store where customers, culture, and expectations were entirely new.
Apple's first store in Hong Kong opened at IFC Mall on a Saturday morning in September 2011, to a line that wrapped the mall and a crowd MacRumors described simply as "large." Within a few years it would become one of the busiest Apple Stores in the world — busy enough to need a third floor.
Baha served as a mentor store leader for the opening: building the team, running the rehearsals, and holding the operating standard while a brand-new store absorbed thousands of customers a day. It is the same role he later played for Istanbul.
Apple Zorlu Center was the first Apple Store in Türkiye — a Foster + Partners glass lantern that went on to win engineering and design awards. For Baha, who studied at Hacettepe University before building his career in Apple Retail, it was a homecoming.
He returned as a mentor store leader for the opening, carrying what worked in Hong Kong into a new market and a new team of Turkish Apple employees on their first day in Apple's blue shirt. The photograph is from noon on opening day — the escalator into a store already full.
"Apple said its revenue in the second quarter surged to $58 billion."Forbes, April 27, 2015 — illustrated with this photograph
When Apple Watch went on preview, Tim Cook made an unannounced visit to the Palo Alto store — Baha's store. The photograph of that morning, Cook showing his custom watch to the team, became the image Forbes chose to run with Apple's record quarter.
That is the kind of influence Baha is known for inside Apple: not a title, but a store the CEO chooses to walk into, and a team ready when he does.
The Apple Park Visitor Center opened to the public in November 2017 — the only place in the world where the public can stand at the edge of Apple's campus. It is part store, part gallery, part embassy, and every visitor arrives already expecting the best of Apple.
Baha leads it today. In between: Store Leader at Stanford Shopping Center and Palo Alto, Project Manager on the Store Journey & Design team in Cupertino shaping how stores are built (2021), and Interim Market Leader for the SF Peninsula, running five stores at once (2023).
Influence inside Apple isn't granted by a title. It comes from being the leader whose store is ready on the morning the CEO decides to walk in.
Product, marketing, supply chain, design, and people teams all converge on one table. My job is to make that convergence feel effortless to a customer.
A mentor leader's success is measured after he leaves. Hong Kong and Istanbul are still standards because the local teams owned them from the first hour.
On Store Journey & Design, the question was never "what does the store look like?" It was "what does a person feel walking through it?"
He was the connector everyone wanted on their team, the person who could get five different organizations aligned in a single conversation and somehow make it look effortless.
I've had the privilege of working with a lot of talented people across my sixteen years at Apple, but Baha stands in a category of his own. He was, without question, one of Steve Jobs' favorite Retail leaders, a relationship built on genuine friendship and mutual respect that few people ever got to experience. He carried that same closeness into his relationship with Tim Cook, someone who trusted Baha's judgment and instincts at the highest level.
What made Baha extraordinary wasn't just who he knew. It was how he moved through the company. He combined the analytical mind of an engineer with the instincts of the best salesperson in the room, and he wrapped it all in a leadership style that made people want to follow him, not because they had to, but because they believed in him.
I watched him make things happen inside Apple that seemed impossible on paper. He didn't just navigate the culture, he shaped it. Working alongside him made everyone around him better, and Apple is a different, sharper company because he was part of it. Baha isn't just a talented executive. He's a legend, and anyone lucky enough to work with him will tell you the same thing.
Baha is one of those rare people you run to work to collaborate with and learn from.
In life and work there are rare moments where you meet extraordinary people that you run to work, so you can collaborate and learn from them. Baha is one of those rare people and professionals.
His outstanding character, critical eye and strategic agility make him an innovative leader who can sharpen customer experience to the highest levels. His leadership is trustworthy, kind and practices the highest integrity — a devoted leader to his organization and his team.
It is an honor to recommend him and an even greater honor to work with him.
Twenty years at Apple taught me one thing above all: a great experience is a great team, held to a standard, every single day. If you are looking for a leader who can set that standard in a new market, a new format, or a new company — let's talk about yours.
On September 1, 2026, John Ternus became Apple's CEO, with Tim Cook moving to Executive Chairman. Ternus joined Apple in 2001 on the product design team, rose to Senior Vice President of Hardware Engineering, and led the hardware behind iPhone, iPad, Mac, Apple Watch and AirPods — the products that fill every table in every store Baha has led. Tim Cook described him as having "the mind of an engineer, the soul of an innovator, and the heart to lead with integrity." Apple Newsroom ↗