Bogdan, thanks a lot for your time. Can you tell us a few words about yourself, to let everybody know you better?
Hello and thank you as well for this opportunity. I'm a 37 years old husband, father and very passionate man about everything alive, that is surrounding us. I have a fantastic family, which I’m very proud of. My beautiful wife is a doctor (anesthetist and intensive care in pediatrics), also very passionate about her job. My lovely daughter is 6 years old and she's full of life, always smiling, a true bless for me and my wife.
My hobbies are connected with gardening (I like to bring uncommon species from another climate and to acclimatize them in my garden: olives, kiwi, kaki etc.) and with life itself: fitness and healthy food. I like to help, to bring joy, to bring my contribution everywhere I go. I love to see happy people near me and I like to come with new ideas and new challenges for the people I’m working with (and to listen them), in order that the final result will be at the highest level.
I graduated an economical high school, then a Life Science University (University of Agricultural Sciences and Vet's in Timisoara, Romania) - Faculty of Horticulture, graduating with 10 (license). Then, I followed 3 Masters, one in Soil Contamination, one in Agri-alimentary market and another one in Landscape organization and a PhD in Agronomy (Agriculture, Agri-chemistry and Agri-inputs, finished with an almost 400 pages thesis, out of which more than 300 were experiences). I was an Associated Professor in the University of Agricultural Sciences from Timisoara, Romania, teaching for a few good years.
How would you describe yourself in just one sentence?
How would you describe yourself in just one sentence?
One sentence? Not easy!
Passionate, positive, enthusiastic, highly motivated, combined with a good dose of common sense and a win-win thinking, who's never giving up.
For you, agriculture is not just a job, it’s a true passion. Where does this passion come from and what are the activities that you do outside work to feed this passion?
Indeed, I feel happy. It is said you have to choose a job that you're passionate of, cause this way you will not work a day in your life. It's true. My passion comes from my family: my parents had a business with plants in my childhood. So, I’ve started from there also with my first lessons of sales & marketing. Then I’ve started my studies in the domain. Even when I was student, knowing plants’ names and botanic, I was completely hungry for new information coming from all horticulture domains, like orchards (all the treatments), vegetables, flowers and vineyards. I practiced a lot and I didn't lose any opportunity of learning new things.
Also, something very important, I’ve started my first steps in the management area, by volunteering and enrolling in students’ organizations. I was voted as President of the University Students’ League and then vice-president of the Students’ Union in Romania, an organization having more than 500.000 students. There, I learned a lot of new things about people and how to manage them to get the best results, about negotiations and public speaking, strategies and planning.
In terms of my passions, soil and agriculture, I always wanted to come up with new things, to discover or to integrate new ideas and solutions that are different and unused, obtaining excellent results. So, I've started to bring plants from a hot climate and to acclimatize them in my garden. And the results were amazing. In October last year I was visited by two TV channels, so I presented to them my Mediterranean fruit that grew up in a temperate climate garden. They were shocked by multiple fruits of kaki, kiwi, guava, strawberry tree, olives and different other plants, not specific for our country.
Recently, during the Carmeuse Europe Rocks internal event, you and your team won the award for the Agriculture Business Development project, as being the best project in Romania. Can you tell us a few words about what this award means to you?
First, we have to say that this event was fantastic and well organized, in a difficult period (during the pandemic). Then, for this event, we had to compete with the excellent projects of my colleagues, which were with nothing less important than ours. But, indeed, we won, and I can say that it's a fantastic performance for me and also for the Agriculture team in Romania. It's a well-recognized effort, an acknowledgement of our hard and smart work during all these years. This prize means a lot to me, keeping in mind that I consider Carmeuse Agriculture Romania as my child. I’ve created this team, I invested a lot of passion, enthusiasm and trust in this project, I developed it, and now I can say I'm leading a fantastic team (Best Agri Team). And this award it's for all the people that helped in a way or another to develop the Carmeuse Agriculture, so I want to thank all of them from the bottom of my heart!
What is the most challenging part of your job in Carmeuse?
As I said, I don't feel I’m working :) All the parts are challenging, keeping in mind that agriculture is a very specific market with a lot of important characteristics. It's a challenge to work with farmers, with Agri distributors and also with my team. Everyone needs the maximum of attention and a lot of time and I need to listen them all. Sometimes I wish a day would have minimum 25 hours :D
How do you find the balance between your job and your personal life?
You know, actually I had this problem. In the beginning, demand creation and developing a new market took a lot of time, too much actually. It was difficult. But if the construction, the base is solid, the whole structure will last.
Then, I remember a fantastic lesson that I’ve had from an amazing person, Joris. He drew a circle and divided it into four parts. He said that this is my life. And the four parts are: 1 family, 2 work and money, 3 friends, 4 myself (my passions). So, it's very important to keep a balance between these four parts, because once you are increasing the importance of one of them, then the others will suffer. So, from that moment, I understood that I must follow this rule in order to be happy and to have a fantastic life.
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