Iona Everson (IE): What was your professional journey to your current position?
Doina Ionescu (DI): I am a scientist by background. I graduated as a nuclear physicist in my home country of Romania and then continued my professional journey with a PhD in physical chemistry, which took me to the UK. I joined Merck many years ago as a bench scientist working on performance materials, joined the company’s sponsored MBA scheme and completed my MBA in the UK.
After that, I moved from scientist to project manager in the corporate mergers and acquisitions department and then continued as a manager in new business development. My first general management job was in Romania, where I started the subsidiary in life sciences from scratch. From there I advanced to regional head for Southeast Europe, returned to Germany and became head of commercial operations EMEA. I moved on to a global role in global business innovation and then landed my current role, which is my dream job.
IE: Having worked in different countries, what are some of the highlights of your career?
DI: I grew up in communist Romania and there were obviously a lot of frustrations. All I could do was study, so I focused on that, but I definitely missed out on popular culture. I grew up in the countryside and first heard of the Beatles when I was 18 and had moved to university, so my music knowledge was very limited. I distinctly remember the family dinners we had every day of the week, because there was no TV, there were no clubs or pubs. There was nothing else to do but to really nurture those family relationships. I focused on my education and I did very well in that because all the distractions that exist today were not there for me.
However, when I started to realise after the 1989 revolution that there was a whole different world out there, I was very curious to see what it was about.
As part of my PhD, I went to Moscow for three months and studied at Lomonosov University. That made me appreciate my life in Romania – the safety of my country and the support from my friends and university teachers. It was just a different culture. Being in Russia gave me a wake-up call and showed me that Romania, in those days, was the better country for me.
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