On October 28, The Diplomat-Bucharest & Outsourcing Today celebrated the most performing professionals of People Empowering Business Forum & Awards Gala 2026, now in its 12th edition. The yearly event underlined through its Forum dedicated to Leaders in Business the core principles of work community and the main aspects that lay at the fundamentals of building strong teams and delivery of competitive and performing work results.
The Awards Gala dedicated to People Empowering Business celebrated and honored leaders and their teams who have made outstanding contributions and impact in fostering an empowering work environment. This anniversary edition highlights top-tier professionals across various sectors of the Romanian economy through both the Forum and Awards Gala.
Find the event recording here: PEOPLE EMPOWERING BUSINESS FORUM & AWARDS 2026 – powered by The Diplomat Bucharest
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The event was supported by:
- Platinum Partner: NXP Semiconductors
- Gold Partners: Vastint, TP Romania, Wipro, Concentrix, Michelin, Accenture
- Partners: Distributie Oltenia, Regina Maria, Schneider Electric, Booking Holdings, INFORM, member of AUSTRIACARD HOLDINGS, Premier Energy Furnizare, Tinmar Energy
- Supporting Institutions: British-Romanian Chamber of Commerce BRCC, Concordia, HENRO – Association of Electricity Producers, ROFMA -Asociația Română de Workplace și Facility Management, Cluj IT Cluster, Lovering & Partners
- Media Partners: Outsourcing Today, Sustainability Today, Automotive Today, Financial Intelligence, Bursa, Economistul, Club Economic ___________________________________________
Find below the Awarded business professionals at the recently held Gala Awards:
🏆 IMPACTFUL WORK PERFORMANCE:
Awarded by DISTRIBUȚIE OLTENIA
Offered by Angelica Răducanu, Chief Administration Officer, Distribuție Oltenia
🎓 Awarded: Radu Marinescu, Project Specialist, Non-reimbursable Funds Projects Department, Distribuție Oltenia
Angelica Răducanu, Chief Administration Officer, Distribuție Oltenia: Good evening. I can hardly find the words to tell you how honored I am to open this gala. I have never had the opportunity to open one before, and I’m delighted to do so because the person I have the honor of presenting an award to tonight has managed to put numbers behind what we all like to call added value.I think we all like to believe that we add value to the processes we work on. Well, this colleague of mine has figures that clearly demonstrate that. In three years, he developed and submitted 22 applications for external funding and succeeded in bringing 1.5 billion RON into the company — almost half of the total amount we managed to attract across the entire company.
Radu Marinescu, Project Specialist, Non-reimbursable Funds Projects Department, Distribuție Oltenia: Thank you very much. It is an honor and a privilege to be here on stage today. I’m a project specialist, and I do this work with pride. I enjoy bringing money into the country and implementing projects as effectively as possible so that we can add value. I want to assure you that I will dedicate my professional career to doing my job as well as I possibly can.
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🏆 LEGACY OF PARTNERSHIP THROUGH PEOPLE
Awarded by WIPRO ROMANIA
Offered by Teodora Todoran, General Manager, Talent Skilling Head, Wipro Romania
🎓 Awarded: The Embassy of India in Romania & WIPRO Romania
Teodora Todoran, General Manager, Talent Skilling Head, Wipro Romania: This recognition is offered in celebration of 20 years of strengthening the ties between India and Romania through people, partnership, cultural understanding, talent development, and shared progress. Honoring a legacy built on trust, collaboration, and human connection. Wipro has been in Romania for 20 years, and we are proud of that because the history behind us has shaped who we are today, as well as the legacy we cherish and honor. Today, we want to celebrate the Romanian–Indian partnership. For this, I would like to invite His Excellency Manoj Kumar Mohapatra, Ambassador of India to Romania, together with Ciprian Dan, Country Head at Wipro Romania
HE Dr. Manoj Kumar Mohapatra, Ambassador of India to Romania: It is always an honor and pleasure for me to be here when Indian companies are recognized with awards. I would like to express my sincere gratitude to the organizers. This year is particularly important for Indian–Romanian relations because the President of India visited Romania. I always remind Romanians that the President’s visit was a significant event.
During that visit, we identified six areas in which we could work together. To encourage cooperation, we use the term SPEED, which refers to supply chain management, pharmaceuticals, energy, education, digital technology, and defense. I would like to offer my sincere congratulations to the company. I fondly remember that Wipro was the first Indian company I visited. I am happy about its contribution not only to the Romanian economy, but also to people-to-people connections, technology, and innovation. There are more than 1,000 Indian companies here in Romania, employing approximately 25,000 people directly. Given the importance of IT and artificial intelligence, I would also like to mention that, during the President’s visit, Romania asked India to provide training in artificial intelligence. You may not realize how far we have progressed in AI. Together with Wipro, we organized a seminar on artificial intelligence. Once again, I would like to express my sincere gratitude to the organizers and congratulate Wipro on the work it has been doing to bring India and Romania closer together
Ciprian Dan, Country Head, Wipro Romania: India and Romania are two very different and distinct cultures, yet they are working together much more closely than many of us might imagine. We are building a relationship based on trust. Any partnership requires more than just investment. Wipro’s 20 years in Romania say something important about that relationship.
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🏆 MARKET IMPACT THROUGH INTEGRATED CAMPAIGNS
Awarded by SCHNEIDER ELECTRIC ROMANIA
Offered by Lucian Enaru, Country General Manager, Schneider Electric
🎓 Awarded: Irina Peptine, Head of Marketing, Schneider Electric
Lucian Enaru, Country General Manager, Schneider Electric” Schneider Electric is recognized as a company that provides technology in the energy sector. Alongside the partnerships we are proud of in Romania, there is an important part of our culture that concerns the experience of customers and partners who contact us or interact with us. It is extremely important to us that when a customer or partner interacts with us, they want to come back a second time — and that they enjoy interacting with us a third time as well. Integrated marketing campaigns make a very important contribution to this overall partner experience. Tonight, I would like to recognize the impact that integrated marketing campaigns have on our business environment, our customers, and our partners. I would also like to recognize the contribution of my colleague Irina Peptine, Head of Marketing at Schneider Electric Romania, to this overall effort known as an integrated marketing campaign.
Irina Peptine, Head of Marketing, Schneider Electric: I can say that I owe this award to the entire marketing team and all our colleagues who contributed to achieving it.At Schneider Electric, marketing is not just about visibility. It is also about strategy, creativity, and execution. We are very happy when bringing all these elements together creates a real impact on the business. Thank you once again, and congratulations to everyone who has received or will receive an award tonight.
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🏆 BUSINESS GROWTH & INNOVATION AWARD
Awarded by TP ROMANIA
Offered by Ciprian Broască, Commercial Director, TP Romania
🎓 Awarded: Alexandru Grecu, Business Development Manager, TP Romania
Ciprian Broască, Commercial Director, TP Romania: The award recognizes creative thinking, adaptability, and a proactive approach to identifying opportunities and driving tangible business growth.
Ciprian Broască, Commercial Director, TP Romania: Honestly, I think this award is coming a little later than I would have liked for the person being nominated.The person you are about to see briefly on stage is responsible, in my view, for a major success within our commercial team.He is responsible for an eight-figure amount in new business, which for us represents double the previous year’s result, year over year.What I can say is that he has a brilliant mind, is very creative, and has an abundance of energy when he sets his mind to something.
Alexandru Grecu, Business Development Manager, TP Romania: Energy is certainly at home here tonight.It has indeed been a very good year financially. What I want to say is that my job is very cool in the corporate world. I have a role associated with the golden fish — I sell wishes. What many people don’t know is that we have a special team behind the scenes that makes those wishes come true. I represent that team, and this award is for them
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🏆 LEADING THROUGH CHANGE
Awarded by PREMIER ENERGY FURNIZARE
Offered by Iuliana Deiu, Marketing Manager, Premier Energy Furnizare
🎓 Awarded: Dan Șerban, Director Customer Care
Iuliana Deiu, Marketing Manager, Premier Energy Furnizare: It is often said that the only constant in life, and especially in business, is change. The people who truly make a difference are those who understand this and, more importantly, manage to guide others through it.This year, at Premier Energy Furnizare, we went through an enormous transformation. We are talking about changes to processes and the alignment of systems, all on a very large scale.At the center of this effort was a leader who successfully guided a team of more than 150 people through this avalanche of new developments. I would like to present the Leading Through Change award to our Customer Care Director, Dan Șerban. Unfortunately, he cannot be here tonight, so I will ask our colleague Marius to come on stage and accept the award on his behalf
Marius Cimpeanu, Energy Director Premier Energy Furnizare: Thank you on Dan’s behalf. What I can say is that this was a very difficult project that had been anticipated for some time, and I believe things will be much better from now on.
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🏆 TALENT ACQUISITION & PROCESS TRANSFORMATION CHAMPION
Awarded by BOOKING HOLDINGS
Offered by Catalina Stancu, Talent Acquisition Manager, Booking Holdings Romania
🎓 Awarded: Luciana Diaconu, Lead Recruiter, Booking Holdings Romania
Catalina Stancu, Talent Acquisition Manager, Booking Holdings Romania: If the Talent Acquisition department’s flight is now so smooth and stable at cruising altitude, much of the credit belongs to my co-pilot.
In the cockpit, our co-pilot has navigated the most turbulent and complex recruitment routes with impeccable analytical precision. But, most importantly, she has been the engine behind the modernization of our entire onboard system. She coordinated the implementation of our new navigation system — our ATS, or applicant tracking system, which is the tool we use for recruitment. She recalibrated the engines to achieve much faster response times and ensured a five-star journey for every passenger on board: the candidates in our recruitment process and, of course, their companions, the hiring managers. Together with the flight crew and hiring managers, she transformed recruitment into a strategic mission. She demonstrated that cutting-edge technology works perfectly only when the person at the controls has empathy, vision, and, last but not least, outstanding change-management skills. Because she has maintained our direction toward the future and transformed every challenge into a perfect landing, it is an honor for me to present the Talent Acquisition and Process Transformation Champion award to my colleague, the elite co-pilot on this journey, Luciana Diaconu
Luciana Diaconu, Lead Recruiter, Booking Holdings Romania: I admit that I prepared for this moment in terms of my speech, but I didn’t prepare for how I would feel when I heard my manager, Cătălina, speak about me.Her speech was deeply emotional and added even more meaning to this award.I feel honored and grateful to be here and to have received this award, especially from Cătălina, who has contributed significantly to my professional development.I thank her and everyone who has contributed to my growth. Thank you for your support, but above all, for your trust.
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🏆 BEST USE OF TECHNOLOGY
Awarded by ACCENTURE ROMANIA
Offered by Doina Voineag, Portofolio Manager Supply Chain Romania, Accenture Romania
🎓 Awarded: Alexandra Iosif, Transition and Transformation Program Lead, Accenture Romania
Doina Voineag, Portofolio Manager Supply Chain Romania, Accenture Romania: Tonight, I have the honor of talking about a colleague of ours who I believe is a perfect example of everything we have discussed this evening: how we reinvent ourselves and adapt, how we combine and retain all the knowledge we have about our industry and processes, and how we amplify it with technology, including artificial intelligence. She is someone who knows how to remain agile, how to learn, and how to adapt every time, no matter how often it is necessary. Above all, she knows how to encourage teams across multiple centers to embrace technology.That isn’t easy. If you ask how we measured her impact, it was not only through the impact she had on our client. She created a real impact on processes, helping us sell more, take on additional processes, and manage more complex work. The increased complexity also helped the teams upskill.
Alexandra Iosif, Transition and Transformation Program Lead, Accenture Romania: We live in an age of speed. I admit that today I wanted to be with my processes, my technology, and my little robots, but I am very happy to be here. I think the most important thing I have been reminded of tonight, through our discussions about technology, is how important it is to understand that, in this age of speed, technology helps us become faster. At the same time, behind technology there are people who develop it and who also benefit from the world we live in
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🏆 EXCELLENCE IN LEARNING: BUILDING FUTURE-READY SKILLS IN AI-FIRST CULTURE
Awarded by BOOKING HOLDINGS
Offered by Anca Fotache, General Manager, Booking Holdings Romania
🎓 Awarded:
Nicoleta Chiriță, Learning & Development Manager, Booking Holdings Romania
Iuliana Petrescu, Senior Learning & Development Consultant, Booking Holdings Romania
Anca Fotache, General Manager, Booking Holdings Romania: This award is presented to the Learning team for their visionary leadership, their contribution to developing essential skills, their pioneering role in adopting artificial intelligence, their promotion of mentorship, and their efforts to prepare employees for the future. I believe this is the fourth consecutive year I have stood before you. One word you will hear from me, just as you have heard it from the previous speakers, is emotion.The reason I feel so emotional, and why I’m sure those who spoke before me felt the same, is that it is very difficult to summarize in just a few minutes the extraordinary things done by the people we are recognizing today.
Earlier, I heard the word change and the idea that change is constant. It reminded me of an aphorism by Heraclitus, who said that you cannot step into the same river twice. First, because you are no longer the same person. And second, because the river itself is no longer the same. This is an extraordinary metaphor for learning. The fact that people have navigated the river of history so successfully, despite so many challenges, is due to their ability to learn — but even more so to the people who have helped them learn. At the same time, our river is flowing faster and faster. That makes it even more important to have people alongside us who help us learn and prepare for the future.
Nicoleta Chiriță, Learning & Development Manager, Booking Holdings Romania: I was thinking that I am someone who improvises. I work in learning, and I am also an improviser, so I decided not to prepare a speech. I thought Anca would inspire me — and she did. She is a source of inspiration for many of us because Anca is also someone who values learning. Our general manager is a learning-oriented person, and I am happy to work alongside her.
I want to thank her for trusting our learning team to carry out many transformations and changes this year, not only related to learning but also to AI. It was challenging, intense, and fast-paced. This year required a great deal of creativity, and we organized dozens of events for our colleagues so that we could support them through this change and help them feel confident.
Iuliana Petrescu, Senior Learning & Development Consultant, Booking Holdings Romania: I feel grateful because I believe I was in the right place, at the right time, and in the right context. I had Anca’s support, as Corina mentioned, but I also had many people behind me. As Alexandra said, there are people behind technology, and behind what we achieved in learning were our colleagues, who helped us tremendously with everything we organized and enabled us to make this impact.
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🏆 THE MOST DYNAMIC TEAM OF 2026 – The ROBOTICS Team
Awarded by NXP SEMICONDUCTORS ROMANIA
Offered by Ruxandra Lupșa, Eastern Europe HR Director
🎓 Awarded: Cosmin Stoica, Robotics Compute Platforms Architect & Team Manager, NXP Semiconductors Romania
Ruxandra Lupșa, Eastern Europe HR Director: Tonight, I am presenting an award that recognizes an extraordinary team, newly created this year at NXP Semiconductors Romania.This team responds both to a major industry trend and to a growing business-development need within NXP globally. It is the Robotics team.
Cosmin Stoica, Robotics Compute Platforms Architect & Team Manager, NXP Semiconductors Romania: First of all, I want to thank you for this recognition. I am honored to receive the Most Dynamic Team award in 2026 on behalf of the NXP Robotics team. Dynamic is indeed a key word that defines our team.
In the middle of the year, we started a new team that works on moving AI toward physical AI, which is a key topic.Our team focuses on robotics. We develop both software and hardware for drones, autonomous mobile robots (AMRs), humanoid robots, and, in the future, physical AI applications. Robotics is developing at an extremely dynamic pace. Technology changes, customer expectations evolve, and challenges emerge from one day to the next, often in ways we could not have anticipated.
Under these circumstances, we decided to build a team made up of some of NXP’s best people, with diverse backgrounds and extensive experience. We brought together expertise in safety, AI, hardware, software, and robotics.
Our goal is to ensure that the robots we build remain controllable and return to a defined fallback state when they exceed certain limits. I want to emphasize that if you have the right people, give them the right environment and the right motivation, you can achieve amazing things, even at a very fast pace.
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🏆 EXCELLENCE IN PROJECT DELIVERY for The Venue, Timpuri Noi
Awarded by VASTINT ROMANIA
Offered by Antoniu Panait, Managing Director, Vastint Romania
🎓 Awarded: Ciprian Dragomir, Senior Project Manager, Vastint Romania
Offered by Antoniu Panait, Managing Director, Vastint Romania: Vastint is a real estate developer with 35 years of development, learning from mistakes, and delivering outstanding projects across Europe. Our portfolio includes thousands of apartments, dozens of hotels, and more than a million square meters of office space across Europe, including buildings for the European Union and the European Commission.
We have extensive experience. Most of the time, we have received awards for our projects.In Bucharest, we have 100,000 square meters of completed office space available for rent, with another 600,000 square meters under construction at Timpuri Noi and Business Garden Bucharest. When we go to the theater, we see actors on stage and a curtain. I always say that our team’s role is to create the right environment for occupants and tenants, so that they never notice anything wrong with the buildings.The buildings must work so well that people do not even realize when a problem occurs.
That is why we build in redundancy. For example, if one chiller fails, the second one takes over the entire load. In the middle of summer, the tenant might not even notice that we had a technical problem.All of this is thanks to a team of people. As I said, most of the time, they see awards or receive recognition for the buildings they have constructed — buildings of increasing complexity. We are also exploring AI and how to interpret the enormous amounts of data generated by the sensors installed in our buildings, more quickly and efficiently.
Tonight, I want to recognize a member of the team. I won’t reveal who it is just yet.This person is always behind the scenes, ensuring that spaces are safe for the people who will occupy them, checking projects and verifying that materials meet the strictest safety standards, especially those related to fire safety.They create an environment where people may never even know who made it possible. I have worked with this person for more than ten years. I’ve been with the company for almost twenty, and he has been here for more than ten.
Ciprian Dragomir, Senior Project Manager, Vastint Romania: Indeed, we have worked together for ten years, and I would like to thank Antoniu for this award and for his trust.The advantage of my role as a project manager is that I get to see what we build and, in the end, enjoy the results. I will continue doing this going forward.
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🏆 MAKING PREVENTION A FAMILY HABIT
Awarded by REGINA MARIA
Offered by Raluca Binder, Corporate Sales Director, Regina Maria
🎓 Awarded: Florina Zamfir, National Retail Manager | Retail Team Regina Maria
Raluca Binder, Corporate Sales Director, Regina Maria: I’m very happy that we can celebrate an important milestone with you tonight at Regina Maria. This year, we are celebrating 30 years of healthcare subscriptions in Romania. For 30 years, we believe we have changed the way employees, patients, and all of us think about our health.
An anniversary is certainly about everything we have accomplished over the years. And I believe we have accomplished a great deal. Looking around the room, I see partners with whom we have worked and developed wonderful projects together, and we thank you for that. But an anniversary is also about what comes next — perhaps the next 30 years. Who knows?
Now, considering Mehiläinen, the Finnish group that recently acquired us and has 115 years of experience, perhaps our ambitions should be even greater. Looking to the future, I would like us to meet again in a few years and talk about the impact we have made in Romania and in private healthcare services. This is how a special healthcare subscription came into being: a product created to celebrate our 30th anniversary.
We developed it this year with a dedicated team and offered it to our subscribers to encourage them to take preventive measures and look after their health. Behind this product is a team that transformed the spirit of our anniversary into a concrete initiative, with the potential to advance what we have been building for 30 years. The Making Prevention a Family Habit award celebrates the team that made this project possible and the way it transformed an anniversary into an opportunity to encourage behavior that can have a long-term impact
Florina Zamfir, National Retail Manager | Retail Team Regina Maria: For us, healthcare subscriptions mean care.
So, this year, when Regina Maria celebrated 30 years of healthcare subscriptions in Romania, we extended that care.
That is why we created the anniversary subscription: because prevention means care, and when prevention becomes a family habit, things are better. If our partners get their medical tests done, and if our parents get their medical tests done, we can help prevent serious health problems. If, through this anniversary subscription that we gave as a gift this year, we have managed to reach several thousand patients, it means we have taken a step forward in prevention, and our goal has been achieved. Thank you very much on behalf of the team. Please know that an entire team worked on this project, from operations and the subscriptions division to the support teams. We did it with great care and affection for our patients.