TheMarketForIdeas

Global careers are often described in terms of positions, promotions and achievements. Far less attention is paid to the personal transformation that accompanies them. This conversation with Roxana Tănase is less about career milestones than about curiosity, cultural intelligence, leadership, and the willingness to keep learning.

I have known Roxana for some time. She was also my student in MIBCOM (master in international business communication) for a brief period – far too brief, if you ask me. She had to interrupt the programme when Microsoft relocated her to Seattle.

Over the years, I have come to appreciate her rare combination of professional excellence, cultural curiosity and generosity towards others. She is an accomplished intercultural traveller who is constantly in touch and values her own culture. She is also a wonderful mother and somehow miraculously always finds time to spend with her extended family and also keep in touch with old friends.

I asked whether she would be willing to reflect on the decisions, experiences, and lessons that shaped her international career. I personally am always interested in documenting the professional journeys of accomplished women and it soon turned out that Roxana is at the moment in her development in which she feels the need to give back what she learned or as she puts it in our discussion to “pay it forward”. For those unfamiliar with it, the expression “pay it forward” means responding to an act of kindness not by repaying the original benefactor, but by extending that kindness to someone else, creating a chain of generosity.

This conversation is also about Romania and a generation of people who arrived relatively late on the international scene and now is leading global teams. They didn’t have textbooks or local role-models. They had to learn on the go. Romania has produced an increasing number of professionals with remarkable international careers, yet their stories are rarely told beyond the language in which they were first lived. This conversation is one such story.

What follows is an edited version of my conversation with Roxana Tănase.

What made you want to pursue an international career? Did you prepare for it in any particular way?

I have always been fascinated by the idea of culture – national culture, organizational culture, and especially the ways in which the two intersect and shape one another. I have spent my entire career in multinational companies, which gave me the opportunity to work with people from many different cultural backgrounds. And yet I always knew that living in another culture is something entirely different from working with people from other countries or simply travelling abroad.

My experience confirmed this. Living in other countries changed me profoundly. It asked of me to become comfortable with not knowing, with asking for help, with making mistakes or trying new things. Before I left Romania, a mentor told me that “living in another country builds character.” She was referring to my children, but I later realized it was just as true for me. When lived with presence and intentionality, life abroad reshapes the way you think and feel. It enriches you inwardly, develops your resilience, and gives you the confidence that you can manage anything that life throws your way – even when you do not yet know how.

I have met many Romanians who, once they leave the country, try to recreate Romania around them. It is a valid way of approaching life abroad. My children and I chose a different way: we made a conscious effort to integrate into the environment we were living in. We built friendships with locals and with people from other cultures, we explored the country, and we discovered its traditions, food, and celebrations.

Of course, we kept our Romanian core, but we enriched it with new experiences. We hosted Thanksgiving dinners at home with friends from several countries, we celebrated Mother’s Day in May, and my children took part in local sports such as American football and cheerleading.

How would you describe your professional evolution so far? Has it been a continuous success story? Have there been failures as well? How did you get to your current position?

Looking back, my career has been a combination of intentionality, serendipity, hard work, and courage. I would not say that I deliberately planned to arrive exactly where I am today, but I also would not say that I got here by accident.

There were people who believed in me more than I believed in myself – people who helped me grow, supported me, guided me, promoted me. I will always be grateful to them. Part of my own mission now is to do the same for others – to pay it forward.

There were also painful lessons that took me years to fully understand and integrate, so that I would not repeat them. And there were “pinch-me moments” when I could hardly believe I had the privilege of being where I was.

How did I get here? At every stage, I had a plan, or at least an aspiration. My aspirations evolved together with me – personally and professionally. They were always clear enough to guide me and help me take the next steps, but flexible enough not to limit me.

For example, when I was HR Director for Microsoft Romania, I knew I wanted my next step to be at a regional or global scale. I wanted a role that would allow me to work from anywhere and possibly relocate to another country, if the timing was right for my family. I also knew I wanted to do something strategic, something that involved thought leadership.

I did not know exactly what would come next, but I knew very clearly what I would not choose. And when the right opportunity appeared, I was able to recognize it and follow it.

Did you experience the kind of culture shock you had previously only known from theory? Could you share a few examples?

Working in another country is a very different experience, even within the same company. When I first arrived in Seattle, for example (even though I had been working for Microsoft for 5 years at that time), it took me some time to understand the local communication style. I learned to pay attention not only to what was being said, but also mostly to what remained unsaid.

The culture of the American West Coast tends to favour indirect communication and the avoidance of confrontation. Coming from an environment where communication is generally direct and explicit, this required a significant adjustment. In Eastern Europe, clarity and directness are often the foundation of trust; on the American West Coast, the very same style may come across as overly blunt or even aggressive.

Recognising this difference helped me become more flexible and taught me how to adapt my message to the context. In the long run, that became an important part of my ability to add value and continue growing professionally.

In my personal life, I also learned that the phrase “You should definitely come over for dinner” is rarely anything more than a polite expression. It is not necessarily a genuine invitation unless it is followed by something concrete – a date, a time, a “How about next Thursday?”

People are generally warm and courteous, but moving beyond that initial friendliness – reaching the point where they truly let you into their personal lives – usually takes time.

In both Seattle and London, I came to understand what many people describe as “peach cultures”: societies that are warm, approachable, and welcoming on the surface, yet whose inner circle can be difficult to enter. They contrast with Romanian culture, which is closer to what is often called a “coconut culture.” We may initially appear more reserved or even tough, but once you’ve earned our trust, you are welcomed as one of the family.

In an era of rapid transformation in business, education, and the very nature of work, what are the constants that remain essential for professionals today?

We hear a great deal about the skills that distinguish us from artificial intelligence – not only in technology, but across every industry. In a world where information is available at the click of a button, where computers can process vast amounts of data, write, and synthesize knowledge on our behalf, our true competitive advantage lies in what makes us deeply human.

Critical thinking is the ability to evaluate, discern, and make sound decisions by weighing logical, ethical, emotional, and strategic considerations. We need people who can formulate and articulate a vision, provide direction, and distinguish what truly matters from what is merely noise on the path toward a goal.

A computer may recommend a course of action. The real question is this: just because it can make the decision, does that mean it should?

Empathy is the ability to understand and genuinely connect with another person’s emotional experience. It is not simply recognising what someone feels, but resonating with it. Empathy is the foundation of meaningful relationships, effective collaboration, and authentic leadership.

Agility and contextual intelligence are equally essential. They involve reading the environment, understanding what is changing, and adapting one’s thinking, behaviour, and decisions accordingly. This is the combination of situational awareness, flexibility, and emotional stability that enables people to navigate uncertainty without losing clarity or effectiveness.

The graduates we need are those who have developed critical thinking, empathy, and the ability to interpret and respond to context. They also need to know how to work effectively with AI.

Around the world, higher education is divided between those who view AI primarily as a tool for academic misconduct and those who embrace it as an integral part of learning. From a business perspective, my position is clear: we need graduates who can combine critical thinking, empathy, and adaptability with a solid understanding of AI and the maturity to use it responsibly and effectively.

AI won’t replace humans. Humans who know how to use AI will replace those who don’t.

What are your thoughts on leadership – particularly women’s leadership? Do you believe it differs from men’s leadership? I know you had the opportunity to meet Jacinda Ardern. How challenging is it to lead in such positions? Do cultural contexts and the overall level of education in a society make a difference?

Women’s leadership is one of the subjects I care about most. In many ways, it has also been one of the most meaningful journeys of my own personal development.

At the beginning of my career – perhaps throughout the first half of it – I operated under the belief that the key to professional success was to suppress my femininity and adopt behaviours that were as close as possible to the traditional masculine model of leadership.

Life, however, offered me a different perspective.

What if there were a third way of being a woman in the world?

What if I did not have to choose between the traditional feminine archetype – the homemaker, the mother, the wife – and the woman who succeeds by behaving like a man, or by proving she can do everything a man can do, and better?

What if I allowed myself to bring intuition, compassion, empathy, and receptivity into my business decisions? What if I remained gentle, feminine, and deeply grounded in my values, and chose to build relationships, strategies, and results from that place?

I have been on that journey for some time now, and the impact has been remarkable. It has not made me weaker – quite the opposite. I have experienced some of the most significant advances of my career.

The difference is not so much what I do – I do largely the same things, and I do them just as well – but how I choose to be. That choice is intentional. And people can feel the difference.

I also know that many women – our mothers and grandmothers – never had the chance to make such a choice. That is precisely why I see it as both a privilege and a responsibility to follow this path while it is open to me, and to support younger women as they discover their own path and, above all, their own voice.

There is much more to say about this. It is a conversation worth continuing.

Roxana, thank you for sharing your experience with such openness and generosity. I hope this conversation is only the beginning of a longer dialogue.