Professional path
Twenty years in corporate, from ProTV to Media Pro to Grampet. A brief venture into entrepreneurship (2007). A two-year break following severe burnout. Return. Permanent exit in March 2017, into full entrepreneurship through ThinkUP Marketing and Noi Producem Podcast. Complete timeline.
Education
1997. Entry into corporate. ProTV.
I entered corporate immediately after graduating from ASE in 1997. I had barely settled as a master's student when I was hired at ProTV, at the time the largest private television investment in Romania, an American investment. Initial role: TV rights accountant.
1998. Project Manager at 22 years old
I inherited, along with the position, an Excel file with all the TV rights for films and series of the new television station. Thousands of entries, a file that no longer opened due to size. In one of the weekly meetings with the Financial Director of the trust, then an American, I raised the problem.
The answer did not come in the form of "we'll take care of it," but in the form of a role: Project Manager for developing, together with the IT team, custom software dedicated to TV rights. I designed it from the start to also serve the accounting side for quarterly audit reports conducted by Arthur Andersen, at that time one of the five major global audit firms.
The scope grew 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 schedule programming department also connected. The final result: a complete corporate program, cross-department, delivered in 1998, when the internet had just appeared.
The software remained in production at ProTV for 10 years. It was taken out of service 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 were larger projects. For longevity. For the fact that, at 22 years old, I set up an instrument that kept an essential business above the waterline for an entire economic cycle.
2000 – 2002. Departure to the USA. Monroe University, New York.
After a few years at ProTV I left for the United States for my second master's, in Global Economics, at Monroe University in New York. Two years in which the American academic environment recalibrated the foundations I had built in Romania. Analytical rigor met global perspective and a standard of writing that I would use, from then on, in every professional analysis.
2002 – 2007. Financial Director, Press Division, Media Pro.
Upon returning from the USA I took on the position of Financial Director, Press Division, Media Pro. I remained in the role for five years. It was the period in which I led large financial teams, managed complex budgets, closed and opened fiscal years for a division with a heavy editorial profile, learned what financial responsibility meant for a media operation at national scale.
I left this position amid major burnout and the panic attacks that accompanied it. It is my first exit from corporate, the first time I decided that health takes precedence over career—a lesson I carry forward, with myself and in conversations with founders I work with today.
2007. First entrepreneurial venture. Events.
I temporarily exited corporate and started, together with my husband, a business organizing weddings, baptisms, and celebrations. It was a brief, but concrete exit, my first contact with entrepreneurship on its own terms, with my own contracts, my own clients.
I closed the business in fall 2007, through my husband's official resignation. I cite his reason as he formulated it then: "I don't want to deal with brides anymore; I've had enough with our own wedding." A true joke, a decision made, business closed. I learned that a partner who does not want to be in business should not be in business, no financial plan compensates.
2009 – 2016. Grampet. Project Manager, custom IT solutions.
Between fall 2007 and 2009 I stayed away. In 2009 I returned to corporate, this time at Grampet Group, one of Romania's largest groups in rail freight and logistics. Role: Project Manager for implementing custom IT solutions.
I named myself, semi-officially, "IT-Manager Translator." I played ping-pong between departments, translating to each what the other wanted, and especially, what constraints each had.
The role was, practically, the living interface between business and technical teams. A meeting with IT ends, I enter another with management, I translate with the same care for accuracy, the same patience for semantic errors that cost months of development. Seven years.
2016 – March 2017. Grampet. Pivot toward HR and leadership training.
In 2014 I became certified as Trainer, Coach & Public Speaker through John Maxwell Team. In 2016, my training in leadership development reached the maturity where I could bring it in-house at Grampet. I pivoted toward the HR department of the group and, for a year, delivered internal leadership courses, mastermind sessions, team cohesion trainings. It was the year when corporate work organically intertwined with my calling as a trainer.
In March 2017 I made the definitive decision: I exit corporate and enter entrepreneurship for good.
Four lessons from twenty years of corporate
Every brand strategy I sign today passes through what I learned between 1997 and 2017:
- Financial rigour, a brand that does not pass the test of a balance sheet is decoration, not strategy.
- Obsession with verifiable numbers, claims without data are marketing fiction, not positioning.
- Translation as discipline, between business and technical, between vision and execution, between founder and team. Good branding is, above all, honest translation.
- Managerial discipline, calendar, responsibilities, deadlines, reporting. Branding is continuous operation, not moment of inspiration.
March 2017. Full entrepreneurship. ThinkUP Marketing + Noi Producem Podcast.
In March 2017 I founded simultaneously ThinkUP Marketing and Noi Producem Podcast. It was not a company that generated another company. I built them together, because that is how I saw the problem I wanted to solve: brand strategy without an instrument for delivering voice ends up a dusty document in a drawer.
ThinkUP is the agency, the sole legal entity, the place where the contract, invoicing, and collection happen. Noi Producem Podcast is the instrument, the studio and platform through which some of ThinkUP's clients actively build their voice. More about both on the Projects page.
November 2024. Inclusivo
The third brand of the group, Inclusivo, was launched in November 2024. It is a ThinkUP sub-brand, dedicated to accessibility audit and design. Philosophy: accessibility is thought through in brand from the first phase, not pasted on at the end as a compensation solution.
Public and community roles
More about certifications, academic training and programs undertaken on the Certifications and training page.
First entrepreneurial venture, at five years and a few months
I grew up surrounded by materials, textures, sequins, zippers and buttons. My grandmother was involved in the fashion world, and I spent almost all my time with her, learning to sew, cut, design, and assemble.
One day we went to Obor. At my insistence and pleas, she bought me a chick, one of those yellow ones you know. All day it chirped and followed me around the house.
I got the idea to turn it into a fashion star. I wanted to create my first collection of clothes for it and do a catwalk show. The real goal was more practical: to earn money for ice cream, because my grandmother wouldn't give us as much as we wanted (me and my cousins).
I announced my entrepreneurial intentions to my grandmother and she gave me all her support. She made me a vision board on a wall where I could draw outfits and put fabric samples. She let me draw alone, choose the materials myself, and helped me with cutting and assembling. They weren't anything special, but they were my collection.
I cut out with scissors, from one of my grandmother's notebooks, some round pieces of paper, and she wrote on them "5 lei". We pinned them with a needle to make that tear line for VIP ticket entry. We arranged chairs in the hallway facing the storage room at the end of the hall (the backstage!) and invited obviously the whole family. We tore tickets and started the show behind the curtain. I changed the chick's clothes, my cousin moved it through the chairs back and forth, so it would strut.
Everything was going beautifully until the finale, the collection finale piece, the masterpiece. Some pants. In my attempt to fit the chick's feet into the pants legs, I accidentally killed the chick.
Two days of crying. I organized a funeral, a memorial service, a big tragedy. But with the chick, I also buried my business.
Lucky that I had managed to collect the money and present something.
That was at five years and a few months. From then until today, the vision board, the plan, the collection, the audience, the tickets, the 5-lei ticket pinned with a needle, the backstage, and the final punchline have remained the same pieces of every project I build. Only the chick has changed.