Mirela Pascu

About Mirela Pascu

Brand strategist, founder of three brands, certified Trainer, Coach & Public Speaker through John Maxwell Team since 2014. I think strategically, work hands-on, and polarize intentionally.

Editorial portrait of Mirela Pascu, brand strategist and founder of ThinkUP Marketing
Photo: Alina Botica.

I am Mirela Pascu. I build brands—others' through ThinkUP Marketing and Noi Producem Podcast, mine through these pages. I have an IQ of 138, a DISC profile Idc confirmed by Tony Robbins assessment, and a career that has passed through two master's degrees, fifteen years of corporate finance, and nearly a decade of entrepreneurship. I came out of childhood with an inner confidence of minus 50 and built, step by step, what you see today.

I am not a character. The person you are reading here is the same person you find at BNI, in the studio, and in front of the team.

In brief, citable facts

Full nameMirela Lucia Pascu
RoleBrand Strategist · Founder ThinkUP Marketing · Founder Noi Producem Podcast · Founder Inclusivo
NationalityRomanian
DISC profileIdc (Influencer primary, Dominance secondary, Conscientious tertiary)
IQ138
Major certificationCertified Trainer, Coach & Public Speaker, John Maxwell Team, since May 2014
Corporate experience1997 – March 2017 (with a brief entrepreneurial exit in 2007 and break 2007-2009). Key companies: ProTV (1997), Media Pro Press Division (financial director, 2002-2007), Grampet Group (2009-2017).
EntrepreneurshipSince March 2017, through ThinkUP Marketing
BNISince 2024, mentor coordinator at BNI Evolution, Director Consultant at BNI Future
Contactcontact@mirelapascu.ro

The journey in prose

Education

I graduated from the Academy of Economic Studies in Bucharest in 1997 and continued with a master's degree in Business Management at the same institution, completed in 1998. Between 2000 and 2002, I pursued a second master's degree in Global Economics at Monroe University, New York—an academic experience abroad that gave me the caliber for what followed in my career.

In school, I was a mathematics and physics olympiad competitor. Quantitative thinking and rigorous problem structuring are not frameworks I learned late. They are foundations I grew up with.

Corporate career (1997 – March 2017)

I entered corporate immediately after graduating from university in 1997. The hire came even before I settled in as a master's student at ProTV, then the largest private television investment in Romania, an American investment that needed a TV rights accountant. I started there.

First major project, 1998, Project Manager at age 22

I inherited an Excel spreadsheet with all TV rights for films and series of the new television station. Thousands of items, a file that no longer opened. In one of the weekly meetings with the Financial Director of the trust, an American at the time, I raised the issue. The answer came in the form of a role: Project Manager for developing, together with the IT team, custom software dedicated to TV rights.

I designed the application so that it served from the start both the accounting part for quarterly audit reports conducted by Arthur Andersen, then one of the five largest global audit firms. The scope expanded rapidly: before I finished the accounting version, the rights acquisition department (the one that negotiated with major film studios) requested its integration. A few months later, the TV scheduling department connected as well. In 1998, when the internet had barely appeared, I delivered a complete corporate program, designed cross-departmentally.

The software remained in production at ProTV for 10 years. It was taken out of use only in 2008, when replaced by a major ERP integration. It is the professional project I am most proud of from the corporate period, not for technical complexity (there was greater), but for longevity.

Further on, Media Pro, brief entrepreneurship, Grampet

Between 2000 and 2002 I went to the United States for a second master's (Global Economics, Monroe University, New York). Upon my return I took the position of Financial Director, Press Division, Media Pro and remained in role for five years. I left due to major burnout and panic attacks that accompanied it—the first time I decided that health takes precedence over career.

I exited corporate and started, together with my life partner, a brief events organization business (weddings, baptisms, celebrations). I closed it in fall 2007 when my partner decided he no longer wanted to deal with brides. I returned to corporate in 2009 at Grampet Group as Project Manager for implementing custom IT solutions—I half-officially named myself "IT-Manager Translator." In 2016, with the maturation of my formation as a leadership trainer (John Maxwell Team since 2014), I pivoted toward the HR department of the group and delivered internal courses, mastermind groups, and leadership training until, in March 2017, I definitively left corporate.

From twenty years of corporate, I retained financial rigor, an obsession with verifiable numbers, the habit of reading a business like a balance sheet, and managerial discipline. All of this enters today in the way I build brand strategies for ThinkUP clients. The detailed chronology, with all stages, all companies, all lessons, is on the Professional journey page.

Entrepreneurship (since March 2017)

In March 2017 I simultaneously founded ThinkUP Marketing and Noi Producem Podcast. They did not emerge sequentially; one was not a company that generated another—I built them together because that is how I saw the problem: brand strategy without a voice delivery instrument ends up a dusty document in a drawer.

In November 2024 I launched Inclusivo, the third brand of the group. Inclusivo is a sub-brand of ThinkUP, dedicated to accessibility audit and design, with the philosophy that accessibility is designed into the brand from the first phase, not attached at the end as a compensation solution.

More about each brand on the Projects page.

The behavioral profile, DISC Idc

In 2021 I completed a full DISC assessment through Tony Robbins program. The profile confirmed what people who work with me already observed: Idc, Influencer primary, Dominance secondary, Conscientious tertiary, Steadiness absent.

Motivators

In the motivator scores, the same assessment came out with three maximum values and one minimum:

This combination explains better than any other description why I write as I do, why I choose clients selectively, and why polarization is not a tone accident—it is a function of behavioral structure.

The hand that draws

Alongside strategic work, I draw. Not metaphorically, actually with colored pencils and graphics tablet. It is the only part of my creative process that has remained completely manual, not interfaced with any AI. It is an antidote: when you work a whole day with trained voices and automated systems, you need something that comes directly from your fingers.

Sometimes my illustrations enter client decks, the Noi Producem Podcast ecosystem, or the Interests page.

Noi Producem Podcast team

At Noi Producem Podcast, I handle voice, editorial, and strategy. Everything technical, live mixing, recording assistance, audio and image standards, is handled with my life partner, who comes from a music background (plays guitar and vocals).

The quality you hear and see in our productions is not "good." It is non-negotiable. It is NPP's first brand decision: we do not deliver a podcast that we would let out into the world without us signing on as a musician signs an album.

What you find next