A life between systems and institutions

I trained first as a mechanical engineer, then as an economist. That double education never left me: I look at organizations the way an engineer looks at a machine, and at people the way an institutional economist looks at rules — as the real architecture behind every outcome.

My career has moved between public policy, research and business. I served as Director of the Social Policy Department in the Prime Minister’s Office in the Government of Romania, advising the Prime Minister on minimum income, human resources development and rural development policy. I was a Senior Researcher with the Kettering Foundation in the United States, working on civic economics, public choice and the economic consequences of civic silence. From 1998 to 2001, I worked with the Education Development Center in New York on international education and grassroots economic development.

In 2005 I founded Enterprise Concept, an IT solutions and consulting company specialized in Business Process Management and Business Performance Management, delivering finance transformation, planning and BPM projects for banks and industrial companies. The company grew to more than 150 analysts and developers by 2015, before its sale to a venture capital fund. That was where I learned, project by project, how wide the gap between business and IT can be — and how to close it.

Today my work has two separate lines: applied enterprise AI, built on the conviction that AI only creates value when it is grounded in the context of real business processes; and venture building, helping researchers and founders turn knowledge into companies. I am founder and Chairman of First Chapter Studio, with a European mandate.

I hold a PhD in Management, with a thesis on the architecture of decision making, and a Master of Science in Management from New York University, where I was a Ron Brown Fellow of the U.S. Department of State. In 2024, I became a Certified ESG Analyst (CESGA) through EFFAS, an EFRAG-recognized qualification.