Hello there & welcome to my world!

It’s Irina here, nice to virtually meet you. I’m an entrepreneur at heart, product marketer, builder, growth aficionado, serial learner, avid reader, amateur horseback rider, curious traveller, annoying wife & mom. I’m a global citizen and I’ve been living, working & studying in eight cities across Europe and the United States.

My work

I’ve spent my entire career in the tech industry (that’s more than 15 years now, but hey, who’s counting?), working all along the funnel, while building and leading marketing and growth teams. I’ve always been thriving while striving and I love to solve the hard problems. I’m currently the Product Growth Director of Mondly by Pearson and the owner mother of Mondly Kids, the family-friendly app that makes language learning fun for our little ones.

Before that, I spent 1.5 years as Bitpanda’s Chief Growth Officer. During my time there, we grew from 2.5 to 4M customers amidst challenging market conditions, I built a growth department fit for scale and scope, as well as the product marketing function which enabled us to elevate the go-to-market approach.

Prior to that I’ve been with Revolut, where I joined initially as Country Manager for Romania in early 2018. During my time at Revolut, I built the local team, grew the market from 20k to close to 1.5M users, led Revolut’s efforts to set up world-class growth teams in Europe, APAC & US, managed our growth across CEE (Romania, Poland, Hungary, Czech, Slovakia & Bulgaria), and, later on, our Global Growth Department.

Before joining forces with Revolut, I’ve been leading the marketing efforts of Uber in Romania, shaping the local strategy and working on strategic regional projects & initiatives. During my time at Uber we’ve launched 3 cities, scaled the market to 1M users and built the marketing team from scratch.

Back in the days, I was the CMO of TechHub Bucharest, co-working place & meeting space for the tech community, and of How to Web, tech conference for innovators in the region, and I have been working with plenty of tech startups in their early & growth stages as founder of my marketing agency. That’s about my work in a nutshell, if you’re curious to find out more feel free to connect on LinkedIn.

My education

When it comes to education, I have to admit that I’m quite the nerd. I’m a serial learner and I find it fun to learn new things and acquire new skills. Some of them are relevant for the work I do. Others are just to satisfy my curiosity.

Graduate studies

• BSc in International Economics & Business, Academy of Economic Studies Bucharest (2006 – 2009)
• MSc in Political Economy, BI Norwegian School of Management (2009 – 2011)
• MSc in Management, ESCP Europe – Paris Campus (2010) – exchange student
• MSc in International Project Management, Academy of Economic Studies Bucharest (2011 – 2013)

Other education

• Member of Reforge. Successfully completed the “Growth series” program (2023)
• Stanford Lead Executive Education Program, Stanford Graduate School of Business, 2022-2023
• Management Essentials Certification, Harvard Business School Online, 2018
• Executive Program in Leadership, Harvard Business School Online, 2017
• Executive Program in Strategy, Harvard Business School Online, 2017
• Marketing Certifications & Classes – Hubspot Academy (from 2009 onwards)
• Plenty of other courses taken on Coursera, udemy or edX among others, on topics ranging from SQL & Python to performance marketing and social media

My life

Outside work, I’m spending most of my time with my husband and our little dragon, born in June 2019. He turned our lives upside down, bringing us lots of joy and chaos, and he’s helping us rediscover the world through his lens, with loads of curiosity, excitement and fun.

There’s little time left between kiddo and work, but I always try to make the most out of it by reading, learning new things, running and binge-watching series (my guilty pleasure).

This is the space where I write about my adventures in the tech world, product marketing, growth, building & leading teams, as well as share snippets of my hobbies & my life as a full-time working mom. These are my opinions only, based on my personal experiences. I don’t hold any absolute truths and neither should you. Feel free to disagree, but please don’t argue. It’s ok for us to have different views based on our self-reference criteria.