When you choose to invest in higher education, you are making an investment in your own career.
The return on that investment comes from many several sources: the network that you build, the content of the courses, the self-discipline that you develop by dedicating yourself to your studies, and the access to the professor’s experiences.
“It is necessary for you to learn from others’ mistakes. You will not live long enough to make them all yourself.” – Hyman Rickover
Consultant Adrian Stanciu is a leading Organizational Development consultant in Romania, specializing in organizational culture management and change. His work touched more than 50 organizations, large or small, in Romania and other countries, and many hundreds of managers and leaders.
Prior to being a consultant, his career included management positions such as Managing director of Xerox Romania, Business Unit director of Xerox CEE and General Manager of Arexim, a Romanian IT systems integrator company that he cofounded and subsequently sold to Xerox Corp.
Also, Adrian is a founding member of the Erudio foundation, an organization dedicated to bringing creativity and expressivity in the field of leadership, and the organizer of the Erisma executive development program in Creative Leadership. In the management development field, Adrian has developed and delivered numerous Executive Training programs to customers of various sizes and of various industries, such as IBM, Xerox, Orange, Raiffesen Bank, Citibank, Allianz, and many local entrepreneurial companies as well as coaching top executives from various industries.
In the academic field, Adrian has graduated as a MSc in the Bucharest Technical University in 1985. He has taught various subjects in graduate business programs in the Bucharest Technical University, the National School of Political Studies, the Academy of Economic Studies as well as the Change Management course in the University of Ottawa and the Canadian-Romanian MBA, and the OBHRM and Change Management courses for CEU Business School.
Adrian is also a constant voice in the Romanian business press, with more than 50 articles published. You can also read him at adrianstanciu.ro.
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Lecturer & Consultant M.Com (Finance) (Merit), Sydney, Australia; B.Business (Upper class honors), Singapore, CFA
Joy Chan possesses vast experience lecturing and developing undergraduate and graduate courses on Corporate Science, Investments, Mergers and Acquisitions, Corporate Restructuring and Valuation in western universities all over the world. Joy has been consistently been rated excellent in teaching methodology by students and peers, and more recently, by an independent trained assessor for ISO 9000 certification.
In addition, Joy also conducts executive education training, is an in-house trainer on Corporate Restructuring and Valuation, and Project Financing courses at prominent Austrian Banks, and supervises graduate and undergraduate thesis in corporate finance and risk management.
Prior to lecturing, Joy held positions in the administration of Singapore, at first as a tax officer and then as Assistant Director at the Ministry of Trade and Industry. She has worked and travelled all through the Middle East, North Africa and Central Asia in an effort to spearhead various economic and financial initiatives that assist Singapore companies to place a foothold in the emerging markets of the world.
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Lecturer 
Thinking in Business Radu Atanasiu is the BISM Adjunct Lecturer of Thinking and Deciding for Business. He teaches for the Executive MBA, the Fast Track Management Program, the Undergraduate programs, and the Entrepreneurship Academy. Radu has also taught in Maastricht for the MBA and in Amsterdam for the undergraduate programs.
Radu has taught the first massive online open course made in Eastern Europe, Critical Thinking – Reason and Fair Play in Communication (2014-2015), and had an international audience of tens of thousands of students. His new online course, Critical Thinking for Business, produced in cooperation with BISM, is hosted on the German platform iversity and can be accessed here.
Radu graduated as MBA from CEU Business School. His interest in decision making has led him to pursue a PhD in Business at ABRI/VU Amsterdam on the topic of managerial heuristics.
Radu Atanasiu has had several career paths and brought to fruition projects in diverse industries. He currently manages his real estate businesses and is actively involved as angel investor in some promising start-ups like 2Performant, SmartDreamers, and Evertoys, while also holding Critical Thinking workshops for companies.
Find out more about his workshops on Thinking in Business.
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Head of Applied Intelligence - Romania Accenture Istvan Kocsolade is a graduate of the Academy of Economic Studies and for the past 15 years has pursued a career in technology and management consulting. He has lead or been part of numerous consulting projects in energy, utilities and FMCG industries both in Romania and throughout Europe. He is currently leading the Energy and Utilities practice of Accenture Romania.
After graduating with distinction the Executive MBA program of the Central European University, in 2010, Istvan has developed a passion for business simulations and its application in various education programs. He has tested several strategy simulations and is continuously searching for innovative applications of simulations in graduate education.
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Consultant Teamology Institute Cosmin co-founded in 1992 one of the first market research companies in Romania. He grew it till 1996, when all shareholders agree to sell it to the GfK Group, one of the top five market research organizations in the world that time. He continued to run GfK Romania and successfully managed the cultural transition form an entrepreneurial entity to a multinational branch, transforming it into the largest company in this field in Romania, since the year 2000.
As a result of his contribution to the success of the company in the region, in 2002 Cosmin was selected in a team of 15 managing directors from around the world appointed to redesign the Corporate Values of the GfK Group at the global level.
Cosmin left GfK Romania in 2005, handing over to the next management team 45 employees and 1,7 million Euro yearly turnover. He started his own consultancy in branding and strategy. Also in 2005, Cosmin co-founded the Erudio Association, an organization that runs the Erisma – Creative Leadership, a three months development program for top managers and leaders of organizations. In this program he taught Public Speaking for seven years.
For more than a decade, between 2010 and 2021, Cosmin joined efforts with Adrian Stanciu within Wanted Transformation, a consultancy aimed to assist leaders engaged in transformational processes of their organizations.
In 2016 Cosmin co-founded, together with some friends and organisations, the first entrepreneurship faculty in South-Eastern Europe – The Entrepreneurship Academy, where he acts as a dean and team coach.
Since 2018 Cosmin specialized in team transformation and high-performing teams. He runs development programs for leadership teams of organisations, using a team diagnostic tool created at Harvard University and various processes to speed up team effectiveness.
Cosmin graduated the faculty of General Economics within the Academy of Economic Studies in Bucharest in 1994 and the ASEBUSS Program for Executive MBA conducted by the University of Washington Business School in cooperation with the Romanian-American Postgraduate School of Business, in 1999.
He publishes occasionally in various business magazines like Revista Biz as well as on his blog: www.cosminalexandru.ro. He is a co-founder, with Raluca Răschip, of Teamology Institute. Together they publish the Podcast for Great Teams.
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Co-Founder FintechOS Sergiu is a consultant in growth-focused business transformation, values based leadership and client centric commercial development. Other areas of expertise include budgeting for success and strategy deployment. He acts as Angel Investor, Board Member or CEO Advisor for a number of local businesses, most notably frufru (from which he successfully exited in 2021). Sergiu has extensive experience in general management, across different industries (healthcare, pharmaceuticals, commodities) and business development, including M&A and startups. He is an active speaker in leadership HR development and health care conferences.
Until the end of 2011, Sergiu Negut has been the Executive Director / Deputy GM and Board Member of of REGINA MARIA, The Private Healthcare Network, previously known as CMU. During his six years with Regina Maria / CMU, Sergiu coordinated a growing healthcare business and an expanding team of professionals, transforming CMU from a family business into an entrepreneurial corporation. The business grew more than ten times through a mix of Greenfield projects and Acquisitions, building on a core of customer centric and humanistic values.
Before 2006, Sergiu has worked for Amgen Inc, in Austria and Switzerland, playing an active role in the company’s expansion to CEE countries and acquiring relevant pharmaceuticals experience. His previous activity includes being the Country Manager of an International Steel Trader as well as setting his own consultancy on steel trade.
Sergiu proudly holds an MBA from INSEAD, and is the Vice President of the INSEAD Alumni Association Romania. He coaches young high potential managers in their career development. He enjoys speaking to MBA students and alumni from various schools, including IMD and Simon Rochester School of Business. His previous education includes a Computer Science degree from Politehnica University of Bucharest and an International Business degree from ASE.
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Former CEO Raiffeisen Bank Romania Steven van Groningen is former president and CEO of Raiffeisen Bank Romania from 2002 to 2022 and a former Olympian rower. From 1994 to 2001 he has worked for ABN AMRO Bank N.V.
Apart from his banking and sports background, Steven is also the Vice-President of the Romanian Banking Association as well as President for the Foreign Investors Council and Founding Member/Member of the Board at Aspen Institute Romania.
In the past he has been part of United Way of Romania as President and Member of the Board for Friends of the National Museum of Art of Romania.
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Deputy CEO, Head of Wholesale Banking ING Bank Florin Ilie is Deputy CEO, Head of Wholesale Banking at ING Romania.
Since joining ING, he had several roles, among which were Head of Financial Markets Corporate Sales for Central and Eastern Europe, CFO Retail Banking and Head of Equity Markets. He was ranked as a top 3 Central and Eastern Europe equity analyst in Thompson-Reuters’ Extel voting by institutional investors.
Prior to that, Florin held various positions in banking, consulting and diplomacy. He was Romania’s Eurodiplomat before the Spanish Presidency of the EU Council in 2002.
Florin has also been teaching Strategy, Finance, Microeconomics and Communication in different roles at graduate and post-graduate levels at the Bucharest Academy of Economic Studies, Harvard University and the Maastricht School of Management. He is a founding member of Aspen Institute Romania and a moderator for its executive seminar and young leaders program. Florin has trained a large number of civil servants and NGO workers for cost-benefit analysis for projects, and delivered the assessment for EUR 1bn+ worth of EU-funded projects for Romania. In his spare time, he likes to build online tools to help people get ahead in life and in business.
Florin earned a two-year Master in Public Administration specializing in Financial Markets & Analysis from Harvard University, a Master in European Politics & Policy with Distinction from the University of Manchester, an Advanced Degree and a BA in Economics from the Bucharest Academy of Economic Studies, and holds a PhD in Economics from the same university. He also took courses at the University of Alcala and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
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Lecturer of Accounting International Universities Laura Ipacs, MBA, FCCA has qualified as a certified accountant (ACCA) in 1994 and is now a Fellow of the Association. She started her career with Coopers & Lybrand, in Corporate Finance Services, spending three years there. She then moved on to finance director positions with multinational enterprises like DuPont and Hasbro in Hungary, also spending six years in management.
She has been with the CEU Business School since 2004 for post-and undergraduate programmes and executive education. Also, she has lectured and provided consultancy to practicing finance professionals in the Central European region. She specializes in accounting and finance technical training and consultancy to practitioners, both in industry and public practice, and ACCA (Certified accountancy) exam training, covering a wide range of exams throughout the syllabus.
She was a member of the International Accounting Education Standards Board of the International Federation of Accountants, representing the ACCA between 2006 and 2007 and has been representative since 2003 for Central Europe on the International Assembly of the ACCA.
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Adjunct Professor International universities Khaled Wahba is an adjunct Associate Professor at a number of universities, business and technical schools located in various countries such as Canada, the Netherlands, Romania, Peru, Colombia, Suriname, Kuwait and Egypt.
With more than 20 years of teaching experience in the academic field, Khaled has dedicated his career as a freelance trainer and instructor with a focus on Data Analysis, Decision Making, Quantitative Research Methods, Digital Transformation, Creative Thinking, Systems Thinking and System Dynamics.
Khaled completed his BSc and MSc at Cairo University, Biomedical Engineering, Egypt in 1985 and 1989 respectively. He received his PhD from Aachen University of Technology in Germany, Faculty of Mechanical Engineering.
In addition to over 95 academic and business publications, Khaled co-authored a book in 2007 titled “How to Write Your MBA Thesis”. Furthermore, he supervised over 400 theses and dissertations in biomedical engineering, and business. For over 6 years Khaled served as the Director of a regional education and training institution (RITI), in Egypt. Afterwards, Khaled served as the CEO of an IT startup company operating in Egypt and the UAE for 4 years.
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Lecturer International Universities Ed Weenk, MSc, PDEng, holds a degree in Business Studies with specialization in logistics and technological innovation from the Erasmus University / Rotterdam School of Management (Netherlands) and a professional doctorate PDEng degree in Supply Chain Management from the Eindhoven University of Technology (Netherlands). He has extensive experience in managing international supply chain projects, having worked for several years for the logistics operator DHL, among others a multiyear stay in Barcelona, Spain.
Since 2004 Ed works as an independent consultant and trainer with focus on projects and teaching in Operations & Supply Chain Management, Strategy, Project Management and Intra-/ Entrepreneurship and Leadership. As part of his training and teaching activities, he runs a number of different business simulations (“serious games”).
Furthermore, Ed collaborates as Senior Lecturer with various Universities and Business Schools, among which are the Maastricht School of Management (Netherlands), Centrum Graduate School of Business (Peru), Antwerp Management School (Belgium), EADA Business School Barcelona (Spain) and Tec de Monterrey (Mexico).
He is the author of the book “The Perfect Pass: what the manager can learn from the football trainer“, published in Dutch, Spanish and English. His second book, called “Mastering the Supply Chain. Principles, practice and real-life applications” was published in March 2019.
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Transformation Designer | People & Culture Ikea Magda Ropotan is an established Innovation Coach and Consultant in Romania, a practitioner of
Design Thinking, Service Design, Foresight, Trend & Future Driven Innovation, and Art of Hosting
methodologies. She is an alumnae of Copenhagen Institute for Future Studies, Institute for the Future – Palo Alto, California and is one of the few Master-Facilitators of FORTH Innovation Methodology in the world.
Magda co-founded Design Thinking Society, a boutique consultancy for design driven innovation, and FutureStation, a consultancy business that supports organizations in exploring trends and future scenarios. Besides her consultancy work, she is a board member at Innovation Labs Romania and Antreprenoria, and a lecturer for Innovation at The Entrepreneurship Academy. Once a year, she is curating and organizing the largest conference exclusively dedicated to Design Thinking in Romania: Design Thinking Forum.
Before moving into consulting, Magda a had a successful career in Honeywell, Genpact and IKEA, both in Romania and abroad.
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Academic and Angel Investor Andreas Antonopoulos is the Rector of the University of New York in Prague (UNYP), a Visiting Professor of Entrepreneurship at BISM and a Partner at Venture Growth Partners (www.vgpartners.io), an investment vehicle focusing on early stage ventures. Andreas teaches Entrepreneurship related subjects in several MBA Programs around the world and regularly gives related seminars, interviews and speeches on this topic.
He has nearly 30 years of experience with an academic, entrepreneurial, investment and corporate background blend. In 2001 he was a Co-Founder of Working Knowledge, a telecoms advisory firm in London which he exited in 2007 and he also co-founded Viva Credit, a fintech micro-lending market leader in Romania which has now expanded to two more EU countries. Andreas has also been an angel investor in a dozen other failed, alive or thriving ventures in the CEE and beyond and is a mentor in a few select accelerators such as Wayra and Startup Yard.
Before his current roles, Andreas has held senior executive appointments in Academia at Central European University as well as a variety of senior and middle management appointments in leading telecom sector companies such as RHK, Lucent Technologies, Nortel Networks and British Telecom. Andreas has worked and/or lived in Argentina, Brazil, Germany, Greece, Hungary, the Philippines, Romania, Singapore, Spain, the UK and the US, and speaks 6 languages. He holds a Ph.D. in Electrical & Electronics Engineering from University College London, UK and an MBA from the Weatherhead School of Management at Case Western Reserve, Cleveland, Ohio, USA. Andreas brings substantial international and multi-cultural experience and insight to BISM.
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Marketing & Brand Transformation Professional Brand Architects Mihai Bonca is a Senior Consultant at Brand Architects, a company specialized on Marketing Strategy and Brand Transformation, and Director Eastern Europe and Demand Generation Practice at Oxford Acuity.
Mihai has an extensive experience involving brand repositioning and renovations. The local and international brands lead by Mihai repeatedly achieved market leadership, while he received more than 25 industry awards for marketing contributions.
He consulted for various multinational organizations, redefining their marketing approach. While he worked with the boards and CEOs in defining strategies, he collaborated with the organizational teams on flawless and timebound execution. His expertise as a consultant ranges from traditional FMCG to B2B, Retail and e-Commerce.
Preceding his consultant career, Mihai was the Group Marketing Director for eMAG, the leading e-commerce company in South-Eastern and Central Europe, owned by Naspers, one of the largest technological investors in the world, with stakes in companies like Tencent, Pay U and Udemy.
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Cofounder & Chairman EFdeN An engineer by profession and NGO person at heart, I am driven by sustainability and making renewable energy and sustainable houses accessible to the many.
I believe education is the only driver for change and founding and managing the largest NGO in Romania on sustainability education, EFdeN, I managed to put my vision in action. Complementary, working with both the private and public sector I piloted renewable energy strategies as well as green smart city solutions to address current global environmental challenges and learned that durable and systemic change only lasts if all three sectors (private-public- NGOs)come together and work towards a common goal.
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Managing Director Chapter 4 Romania + 15 years of practice in communication strategy and public relations consultancy, as well as corporate and brand communication and employer branding for clients from various industries
+ 8 years of intrapreneurship, while growing a team of talented specialists and developing a business from startup to SME.
Expertise:
– Communication: reputation builder, marketing communication strategist, corporate and brand PR consultant, crisis communication manager, media relations and events // media trainings, executive branding.
– Business development: service business growth consultancy and mentorship for startup development.
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Schoolvision / Team Academy International Executive Director After High School, Peer followed his academic education in the military.
After serving there for about 5 years, he left the Royal Dutch Army and started working at Dutch Immigration.
There, once more, he was confronted with his entrepreneurial mindset.
Since 2001, he is an entrepreneur with a focus on education. For many years he has combined entrepreneurship with working on projects in the public sector and private sector.
He recently moved to Bucharest for yet another exciting project related to entrepreneurship and education.
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Cofounder Deepstash Co-founder of uberVU in 2009. It was among the first all-in-one social media services in the world and its ability to highlight insights from billions of conversations happening on many social platforms (Facebook, Twitter, blogs etc) made it the service of choice for thousands of customers all over the world. The company was acquired by Hootsuite in 2014, and he is now the Director of Product, in charge of all Analytics products.
He is also an amateur chef and bedroom techno DJ. But first of all he is a multi-linguist of technology driven businesses. During his career he wore many hats (product manager, technology chief, marketing person) and led uberVU through various stages of growth: from the early days when the company was just an idea to international expansion. Forbes awarded his for his entire career placing me on their “30 under 30 list” … that was some time ago. “It’s better to set low expectations” they said. He likes to mentor early stage startups and you will find him among the speakers at a lot of the tech conferences.
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Founder & CEO Aggranda & Canopy Over 15 years of experience in management and online marketing. Speaker at over 200
events in Europe and the USA, trained over 10,000 students in the Digital Garage
program organized by Google Romania, teacher at the master in online advertising from
Bucharest University of Economic Studies (ASE) for the last 5 years.
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Founder Ideograf Sandra Jitianu is a management consultant, trainer and performance coach with functional expertise in HR and change management. She holds an Executive MBA from CEU Business School. Sandra has 14+ years’ experience delivering transformation projects to over 50 clients ranging from large international companies to local companies and entrepreneurs in industries like IT and engineering, financial services, professional services, manufacturing, utilities and retail. She delivered consulting engagements and training in Romania, the Rep. of Moldova, Spain, Germany and Switzerland first as Principal with Ensight, the largest local consulting firm, and since 2017 under her own brand, Ideograf. Before becoming a consultant, Sandra served as the HR and Communications Manager for Siemens Business Services in Romania.
Apart from business consulting Sandra has been increasingly involved in teaching and coaching. For the past four years Sandra has been teaching public speaking and business writing at EA – The Entrepreneurship Academy in Bucharest. Starting 2019 she has been a coach and mentor for two international initiatives supporting women: Inspired Women Lead and Homeward Bound, the global leadership initiative for women with a background in STEMM. Sandra is the co-founder of iTeeneris and Mental Fitness Romania, where she teaches mental and emotional fitness based on the methodology developed by Stanford University lecturer Shirzad Chamine.
Sandra is a certified consultant for organizational development (Human Synergistics®) and a member of the International Coach Federation (ICF).
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Foresight Strategist & founder futureStation Diana is founder of Future Station, a foresight and strategy consultancy agency that helps organizations to understand changes, spot new trends, spark innovation, run strategic planning exercises and prepare for the future. Clients served range from industries such as retail to telecom, banking to manufacturing, FMCG and real estate, plus NGOs and public institutions (Ministry of Education, UNESCO).
As part of her work as strategist, Diana undertakes solid research and is part of various think tank groups on Future and Transformation topics (such as Certified Coach and Ambassador within the Open ExO Community). She has also been part of the 2019 cohort of the International Certified Future Strategist program commissioned by the European Commission, and also in the pilot program of Design Futures of the Institute for the Future in Palo Alto. Diana graduated Professional Foresight at University of Houston, US.
She takes energy from mentoring startups; she speaks at conferences and regularly contributes articles to publications interested in the Future.
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Partner Amrop Executive Search Romania Mircea spent 20 years in management positions. Having a Finance background, he started his career in Aluminum industry as Finance Manager, then he developed his career in FMCG, working as Industrial Controller for InBev Romania and after that as Financial Controller, SAP Project Manager and CFO for Coca-Cola Romania & Moldova. Starting in 2009 he worked in Transportation & Logistics, becoming CEO of a Private Equity owned company. Later he worked in Turnaround management as Chief Restructuring Officer. Since 2015 he is an executive search & leadership consultant, working on over 100 top management and non-executive director assignments for leading companies in Romania. He also executed a number on international assignments in Investment/Real Estate.
Working in different business environments, from multinational companies to private equity and consulting, Mircea used his experience to generate his own entrepreneurial projects, developing start-up projects in various industries, from hospitality to agriculture, energy, CSR and international forwarding industries.
He has built in-depth expertise in strategy, business transformation, leadership development and cultural change.
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Partner & Director of Paid Media department DWF View less
