Andreea Pipernea, CEO of NN Pensii, Andrei Bijutescu, CEE Regional Partner TikTok at Httpool, Sandra Ecobescu, President of Calea Victoriei Foundation, Dan Boabeș, Country Manager at Black Cab and Diana Mihăilă, First Master Professional Organizer in Romania, speak to us for the first time about the vital role played by work failures in building a career, at the first 2023 edition of Fuckup Nights Bucharest

Bucharest, 1^st of March 2023: Andreea Pipernea, CEO of NN Pensii, Andrei Bijutescu, CEE Regional Partner TikTok at Httpool, Sandra Ecobescu, President of Calea Victoriei Foundation, Dan Boabeș, Country Manager at Black Cab and Diana Mihăilă, First Master Professional Organizer in Romania, share their stories about professional failures at the first Romanian event dedicated exclusively to them.

The event will take place on Thursday, 9^th of March, starting from 7pm, at Refugiu Urban. Event tickets are available on Eventbook and on Iabilet. The event will take place in physical format.

Fuckup Nights changes the narrative about work failures and errors, stimulating creativity in order to identify new solutions to overcome difficult moments in our careers.

FUN XVI kick-starts the series of 2023 editions with five new personalities from various areas of activity who will show us, through personal stories and examples, how they managed to transform failure into  learning opportunities on the path to success. Andreea Pipernea, Andrei Bijutescu, Sandra Ecobescu, Dan Boabeș and Diana Mihăilă will shape new perspectives about career failures and will share lessons they learned in difficult moments. Each discussion will end with a Q&A session, so as to offer the public a chance to find out more about the guests’ experiences and vision.

The event moderator is radio and television journalist Julia Nagy.

Diana Iosu, the organizer of Fuckup Nights Bucharest: ”Failure can be transformed into an exceptional learning opportunity if we manage to see it that way. Fuckup Nights events do just that: they bring to attention people who are successful…or not, who share with us, often for the first time ever, difficult moments that hide in the background of what is now visible. We usually avoid talking about these aspects, because we are judged. Failing is perfectly normal in a process of self-improvement, it only helps if you get back up and try again. Fuckup Nights helps us reach new heights about how humane and natural failing is on a professional level, but also about how you can learn to view failure as something that happens in your favor.”

Andreea Pipernea is CEO of NN Pensii since 2017 and vice president of Romanian Pension Funds’ Association (APAPR). Andreea has extensive experience of over 20 years in the financial sector and over the years she took on multiple leading roles in risk management divisions, treasury, business development, as well as corporate and investment banking. Andreea is certified as Independent Director at Henley Business School and is a member of the Advisory Board of reputable local companies. In the past few years she has been involved in the entrepreneurship sector as a Business Mentor, as well as in academia, teaching the Business Strategy course as Associate Professor at the Bucharest University of Economic Studies.

Andreea’s vision is that we learn more from our failures than from our successes, which we easily take for granted. “My favorite film director, Woody Allen, says – in my own interpretation – that if we don’t fail from time to time, we have certain proof that we are not doing anything special. In the end, the one who fell and got back up gains more than the one who never tried. Because in the next adventure, they won’t start again from zero, but they will begin based on experience.”, says Andreea.

Andrei Bijutescu is CEE Regional Client Partner TikTok at Httpool. Andrei is best characterized by the description “The Sales Man”. Andrei says he has been selling since forever. He has been selling since 1994, when he knocked on the door of Libertatea newspaper, and since then he has changed many jobs, but they all had his essence in common – one of a salesman.

Failure tears Andrei down, literally. Sometimes for a few seconds, other times for a few days, but never more than that. There is no explanation, besides genetics, because he recovers every time. That’s what he’s like: he always finds the resources he needs to pick himself up again, to find lessons in each failure and to know what not to repeat in the future. If failure were a school subject, Andrei is convinced he would be a good teacher.

Sandra Ecobescu is founding member and President of Calea Victoriei Foundation, an innovative an dynamic project dedicated to culture and lifelong learning, which has been enlivening the life of Bucharest for over 15 years, through courses, conferences and unconventional classical music concerts. Sandra believes that education, art, culture and personal development are essential aspects in the lives of all those who wish to enjoy each day, find their purpose, and bring positive change within their community, city or country.

Sandra believes that there are no personal or professional experiences that don’t contain moments of failure, falls, disappointments, despair or pauses in development. ”The biggest failure is to not learn anything from previous ones, to think that whatever isn’t working is caused by external, uncontrollable factors, when in fact, more often than not, we can change the rules of the game to our advantage, provided we are lucid, honest, motivated and innovative”, says Sandra.

Dan Boabeș is Country Manager at Black Cab Romania and serial entrepreneur, innovator and Angel Investor. He has over 20 years of experience in Telecom and in multicultural environments, initiating businesses in six countries from three continents. Dan built over ten businesses from scratch, some of which closed, while others are still delivering happiness to their clients. He launched the first mobile payments operator in Romania and the second telecommunications operator in the country at the beginning of the 2000s. He launched a money transfer company on markets in Romania, Italy and Spain, as well as the first payment solution for public transport tickets, accessible on mobile phones. In 2013, he launched a ride-sharing app in Riyadh, which was then extended to Mongolia and Brazil. Currently residing in Bucharest, Dan is still passionate about business development using new technologies. He is the current manager of Black Cab Romania, the main premium ride-sharing company in the country.

Dan believes that we often talk about successful projects, but we rarely mention successful failures:”the success of a failure is based on how you were able to learn something from that business and life lesson, but also on the way you atoned for it through an improved version of yourself. Even if we rarely speak publicly about these kinds of moments, it is useful and necessary (maybe even mandatory) to speak to ourselves. The image of a failure changes constantly depending on the distance from which we are looking, but also depending on the experience filters we gathered over time.”

Diana Mihăilă is the first Master Professional Organizer in Romania, author and creator of Marea Organizare Matinală, hosted during the morning TV programme Super Neatza with Răzvan and Dani (Antena 1). She is also the creator of a method of organizing dedicated to parents with small children, and a one-month programme for meaningful organizing of things and domestic spaces, which was included by the European Parliament in the list of initiatives with a large-scale positive impact (#MareaOrganizare). Diana founded the largest community of its kind in Romania, recognized during Facebook Women Community Leadership Meeting, Warsaw, and awarded at the Digital Divas Gala, in the category Best Women Communities. She was a TV and business journalist.

Diana tells us that she did not experience any failures. There were only projects, situations, contexts that were not right for her. She did not understand all of them right then, and she did not always easily accept them. But in time, she learned to make peace with certain things and to focus more on her own way and how she feels like being in this big world.

Diana strongly believes that ”what is meant for you, will not avoid you! Maybe sometimes you feel that it’s late to come, but it certainly won’t avoid you!”

Fuckup Nights Bucharest is part of a global network of events, taking place in 215 cities from 62 countries worldwide. The events shift the paradigm regarding professional failures and is intended equally for small and large entrepreneurs, those who work in corporations, freelancers and students.

Previous editions of Fuckup Nights Bucharest are captured here: Vol I, Vol II, Vol III, Vol VI, Vol X.

Event partners are FAN Courier, Radio Guerilla, Refugiu Urban, Complice, Techcelerator, ROTSA – Romanian Tech Startups Association, ClujHub, Fonduri Structurale, Bizilive, More Networking, Learning Network, Psychologies, Cooperativa FruFru, IQAds, SMARK, IQool, Revista CARIERE, Commons, SocialPedia, Sandler Training and Sabina Cornovac Online.

Event details are available on the dedicated web page and on Facebook.