About Raluca

  • Professional Certified Coach with ICF (2014)
  • Certified Professional Coach with ICA (2014)
  • Coaching Training Institute (2007)
  • Associate Certified Coach – International Coach Federation (2008)
  • Organization & Relationship Systems Coaching (ORSC) @ Tel Aviv (2011)
  • International Coach Academy (ICA) @ Bucharest (2014)
  • Founded local chapter of International Coach Federation (2006)

The changing

Change governed my life so far. Most of the time it was a conscious need, but there were also times when it came as an external factor. I easily accepted it every time, knowing that, in its absence, my life would have been a long series of boring events.

Coaching was one of the changes that came to me, but although I accepted it and built my life upon it, it has been a challenging road, for sure.

The five professions

It all started from my fear of being stuck in my home town, Câmpina (quite beautiful actually), where I could picture myself working in a factory, from 7 a.m., and married with a bored husband. So I asked acquaintances to help me find a job somewhere else. This is how I ended at an interview at Amoco Petroleum Products, an American distributor of petroleum products that was building filling stations. It was in 1996. I had no idea about how to use a computer and my English was rather relative (we were taught Spanish and French at school). It was about time to change these things.

But just 9 months later Amoco decided to leave the market. I got two job offers – vice president assistant at ABN Amro Bank or partner in a company founded by three of my colleagues. We really didn’t know what we were going to do. We knew we could offer consultancy services regarding field acquisitions. So I went on with it.

In two years we developed the emission antennas network of CONNEX (later bought by British telecom company Vodafone). To put it shortly, we were working from 6 a.m. to 9 p.m. I was dropping by at home twice a month. But none of us was a real entrepreneur and we wouldn’t think in advance. When the contract with CONNEX ended, we didn’t have anything left to do.

So with the money left we opened a pub. Three months of work there (including a bartender position) were enough to realize that it wasn’t what I wanted to do.

It took me an year to find another job in a PR services provider. Another job, another new domain, new things learned on the run. I worked 6 years there, from 2000 to 2005, and the most important were how to manage clients and what high standards mean.

Yet, my heart missed entrepreneurship. If at 30 I still dreamed about a career, at 36 I realized that being my own leader was more important.

This feeling (coincidentally?) appeared along with my marriage and the decision to have a baby. I wouldn’t have wanted to be the kind of mother that finds out about her child from the nanny or from the teacher. So I took the chance of the maternity leave and went to coaching classes. In the first two days I couldn’t understand anything, but in the third day I saw the light sparkling. I told my husband that “I wanted more” and he replied, joking, that it was exactly what he was afraid of.

Don’t fear change

I believe that my fear of boredom was so big that I couldn’t also feel the fear of change. I felt like learning and trying as many new things as possible. I didn’t know what I was looking for or how will I get to that thing. I didn’t even know what I was looking for actually. I thought that my duty was to explore so I’d have where to choose from.
Even though I talk about all these things as if they were changes, at that time I didn’t perceive them this way. It was “I must” versus “I want”. And I felt like I needed to keep the engine working and go ahead. I cried, and laughed, and suffered and cheered.

Learn something from any experience

I learned what work means, I learned how to relate with all kinds of people, I learned to appreciate the education received from my parents, I learned that standards are important, I learned to coordinate people and gained the experience to stand in front of people and say: “I know what you are going through, I know how where you are feels”. I also learned that it is good to stop from time to time and ask yourself: “now, where?”. I learned that it is good to do things only or yourself, I learned what love and friendship are, I learned to see behind appearances and not judging and I discovered my values, beginning to appreciate both mine and those of other people.

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