Alumni revisited

1. What do you do today?
I am attending the MBA program at University of Chicago Booth School of Business.

2. Looking back, why did you choose to become a management consultant?
With the risk of using a cliché, I think that consulting chose me rather than the other way around. After graduation, through a series of favorable circumstances generated by a friend who worked in consulting and who got my attention to what she was doing, I successfully applied for a Business Analyst position at Roland Berger.
If the way I became a consultant was more or less by chance, the fact that I kept working here for almost four years is the result of an assumed decision. The work diversity and intensity, the accelerated professional development and the opportunity to work with extraordinary people, of whom many became close friends, are just some of the reasons for this decision.

3. What were the key moments of your time as a consultant?
Telephones from clients that congratulated us for our work, meetings with top management of some of the biggest companies in Romania, press articles about successfully completed projects that I had been part of, opportunities to pass on knowledge acquired to other colleagues – and many other achievements.

4. What have you learnt as a consultant and what is the most useful in your actual career?
The projects that I've been involved in have provided me with the chance of enhancing my knowledge on numerous industries or functional areas. Apart from these, the most important lessons I've learnt as a consultant are linked to the generic way of analyzing and structuring every task. Consulting offers analytical rigor, discipline in thinking and curiosity to explore the causes of each fact and to move beyond evidence. Not accidentally, after the period spent at Roland Berger I went on studying at a school whose motto is "Challenge everything".

5. Tell us an important/funny happening from your time at Roland Berger!
All the projects had their moments of amusement. One of the funniest moments happened during a meeting with the representatives of the company's shareholders when, because of a confusion generated by the expanded format, they believed I was a member of the board.

1. What do you do today?
For over 18 months I have been the shareholder and general manager of a company that undertakes import and distribution of niche frozen foods.

2. Looking back, why did you choose to become a management consultant?
My choice was driven by a Roland Berger recruitment ad; as soon as I've seen the ad, I wanted to apply for the position, because I anticipated a broad opening to a variety of industries, a great interaction with people with interesting business experiences and a chance to become part of an organization with high-standard services that demands much and gives back just as much to its people, namely the Roland Berger consultants. Moreover, the prospects of international experiences within the company and during the interaction with foreign companies, clients of Roland Berger, have been an important factor when considering my decision.

3. What were the key moments of your time as a consultant?
The key moments have definitely been the projects that modeled and defined me as a consultant – both projects with greater freedom and responsibility of development and implementation, which I sought for, and projects with high exposure to international teams and consulting methods beyond national boundaries. The achievement has been enormous, because if you manage to cope with expectations and time pressures and meet your deadlines, then your realize you've passed another milestone and maybe even fastracked your career.

4. What have you learnt as a consultant and what is the most useful in your actual career?
I see myself before and after Roland Berger and think about what I've added so far. There are some essential aspects:

1. Responsibility (which results not only from your obligation to meet your project objectives, as a member of a consulting team, but also from the many situations when you alone have to represent Roland Berger with competence and pragmatism in front of your clients and their representatives)

2. Flair – it is essential to feel your client and know how to interact with him/her (beyond the proved competence, a client feels if there is 'chemistry' between him/her and the consultant and whether he/she will wish a subsequent collaboration)

3. Resistance to stress and pressure (not necessarily from a superior, but from the context itself, from business partners and unpredictable situations that can pressure you and your team in a very short time)

5. Tell us an important/funny happening from your time at Roland Berger!
The funniest project I've had was a PMI somewhere in Romania with an international team and significant allocated resources. Although it was very demanding, it was the project with the most numerous funny situations, in which humor joined us at all times and thus contributed to uniting a very competent and efficient team. There were many amusing situations and I even recall making up a chronicle of witty thoughts. Yet, as a picturesque element, I remember we had 2 foreign colleagues that fell in love with Romanian food to such extent that they had for lunch an interesting combination of two typical dishes, "tripe soup with meatballs" everyday for six months in a row.

1. What do you do today?
I am CEO and private investor in the company group owned by Gemisa Investments.

2. Looking back, why did you choose to become a management consultant?
In 1994, when I joined the Roland Berger team in Bucharest, I was convinced that it was the best option to prepare myself for a career in top management. I still believe that working as a management consultant is the best business school.

3. What were the key moments of your time as a consultant?
The key moments have been those when I had to decide on behalf of my clients and take responsibility for implementing the specific decisions, for instance when I had to negotiate and seal M&A transactions, to take over the management of a company during restructuring or to negotiate the restructuring plans approved by the shareholders with the management and labor union representatives.
From a professional point of view, interesting moments have also been the privatization programs in Romania coordinated by Roland Berger during 1994 and 1996, the economic crisis from Russia (1996-1998) and Romania (1997-1999), the frenzy and then the telecom and dot.com crisis from 2000-2001, and last but not least, the Romanian economic relaunch following 2002, moments that permanently changed the major themes of management consulting in Romania and, thus, in our activity.

4. What have you learnt as a consultant and what is the most useful in your actual career?
The most useful thing I've learnt is that successful businesses, the markets/countries in which they activate as well as the people behind them can be extremely diverse, but 3 things always bring them together: excellent managers, positive cash-flows and profit.

1. What do you do today?
I am currently Procurement Director at Romtelecom.

2. Looking back, why did you choose to become a management consultant?
It had to do with me graduation from the Management Faculty within the Academy of Economic Studies in Bucharest and wanting to work in management, especially as I was a 'generalist' and I didn't have a specific field in mind at that time. Furthermore, I had the chance to win a Tempus scholarship in Spain during my last year of studies and there I activated as an adviser in Ouverture, the European Inter-regional Cooperation with Eastern Europe Program, experience that opened my eyes to consulting, cross-sector and regional studies, etc.

3. What were the key moments of your time as a consultant?
Each step taken during the almost 8 years of consulting was filled with important moments: my first project, the first proposal that I've written, the first project module that I've been responsible for, the first project I've coordinated, etc. Yet if I were to name key moments from my consulting career, these would be: being promoted up to Senior Consultant, taking part in a Strategic Sourcing project in Sao Paolo, Brazil, for almost a year, successfully completing a Phare tender documentation for the restructuring of an important construction company in view of privatization, etc.

4. What have you learnt as a consultant and what is the most useful in your actual career?
Firstly, the experience with Roland Berger has developed my strategic vision, the ability to see the big picture and to correlate both economic sectors and departments inside big companies. There is also the experience in studying processes and, why not, the skills to make relevant and concise presentations for top management, shareholders and so on.

5. Tell us an important/funny happening from your time at Roland Berger!
There are too many to choose from, but let me tell you about the first day for the Brazilian project I've mentioned before. I was asked by the Sao Paolo Roland Berger office to take part in this project about acquisitions for an international bank. I found out we would be three foreign colleagues in this project: a Spaniard, a German and me. After a never-ending flight from Europe to South America in December 1999, leaving Romania at -7°C and arriving there at +30°C, I met the other two colleagues in the airport and we realized we all spoke English and Spanish, but none of us knew any Portuguese. Shortly after arriving at the hotel we went to the office, where the Brazilian colleagues started presenting us the methodology of the project that was due to start the next day on a presentation done in Portuguese (!). At one point the Brazilian Project Manager told us: "There's no need to speak in English, since you also know Spanish, right? Well, Portuguese is very much like Spanish, so you will get used to it very fast!" From that point on, he only spoke in Portuguese and we had to adapt quite fast, and in less than two months we were able to communicate in the new language. Therefore the conclusion: you are a good consultant if you manage to adapt to many new things on the way!

1. What do you do today?
I am currently coordinating the commercial strategy department of Vodafone Romania.

2. Looking back, why did you choose to become a management consultant?
I was particularly attracted by the diversity and challenge brought about by the projects, the professionalism of my colleagues and the opportunity to accelerate my professional development.

3. What were the key moments of your time as a consultant?
Each project brought something new, a challenge and key learnings. Each step towards more responsibility on each project represented key moments.

4. What have you learnt as a consultant and what is the most useful in your actual career?
There are many lessons that you learn as a consultant, but issue structuring is a skill which can be rarely developed outside strategy consulting – the ability to understand a situation – the client's problem – and articulate a logical path toward finding a solution – the development of the project and the final recommendations.

5. Tell us an important/funny happening from your time at Roland Berger!
When I left the company, at the good bye party I was requested to solve a brain teaser which I had previously used to recruit an entire generation of consultants.