Currently I am experiencing the largest transformation of my business in the last 12 years. I call it the 4R: rebranding, repositioning, restructuring our services and portfolio, and my own personal relocation to Madeira, Portugal. It’s an intense year, to say the least.

Mentoring topic:  Personal Branding: Your Safety Cussion in Times of Crisis

We seem to be moving from one crisis into another without even one week of rest. Even though we may feel depleated, we still need to stop and reflect long term on our health, family well-being and on our careers. The last two years have brought numerous challenges, but also incredible opportunities. Remote work has empowered many women to experience work-life integration perhaps for the first time in their lives. How can we retain this new sense of freedom, empowerment and well-being in the new world of work? Remote work has a caveat: the more we work remotely, the more we need to make ourselves visible virtually, so people don’t forget that we exist and notice our contributions. If we fail to do that, we run the risk of offices turning into “white boys’ clubs,” where decisions are made for our own work, life and future without us. Becoming more visible thanks to conscious personal communications and to building your personal brand means becoming much more relevant, influential, worthy of higher compensation and promotion and, ultimately, irreplaceable in our teams and organizations. All it takes is one decision: that you take responsibility for your personal communications. In this mentoring session I will share with you two things: the reasons I believe we need to make our personal communication a priority more than ever before, and a simple formula to structure your thoughts around your personal branding. I also want to take as many of your questions as possible and support you to identify your next step that will bring out into the light the visible, influential and thriving you.

What is the best advice you have ever gained?

“Cristina, when you want something, don’t look right, don’t look left. Keep your eyes on your goal and you will get everything that you want, once you put your mind to it.” – advice received from my first grade teacher in our village in Romania.

Are you planning any change in 2022?

Only everything 🙂 I am currently transforming the name, focus and complete service portfolio of my company. Our mission is to triple the number of women CEOs in Central, Eastern and Southern Europe (CESE) by 2030. We want to work with smart, talented and ambitious women from our region who want to grow into the C-Suite at the local, regional and global level. Following the pandemic, numerous global leadership positions opened up to be executed remotely. This is a fresh and unique opportunity for our talented and ambitious women who can now blossom and thrive without having to relocate. To fulfill our mission we identified three major areas that hold women back from the C-Suite: making personal communications a top priority and developing visible and influential personal brands; taking better care of themselves, their resilience and their emotional intelligence; and strategic thinking and complex stakeholder management. Our new activities in these key areas will become visible by the end of June 2022. Do keep an eye on my LinkedIn profile, where I am going to announce most of these changes. I am thrilled to be able to contribute to the healthy growth of our region by supporting our smart, talented and ambitious women to grow into their glory.

How do you refill your energy?

I spend a lot of time alone. I read, walk with my dog and stay away from the noise of the world. The thing that energises me the most is water, so I need to spend a lot of time by rivers or by the sea. I also have a handful of close friends with whom I talk regulary to support each other in our work and conscious living.

What do you do when you can’t do something, as you imagined?

I stop, try to understand what’s going on (I use several exercises from the field of emotional and systemic intelligence to gain critical distance and identify bottlenecks) and then decide whether the drop the issue altogether because it’s not worth addressing or, if it’s worth addressing, what the fastest way to remove the bottleneck is. Sometimes all things need are a bit of time, sometimes some courageous conversations, but usually that what is worth pursuing gets moving again.