Romania's leadership foundation · Est. 2000

WE DON'T TEACH
LEADERSHIP.
WE PUT YOU
THROUGH IT.

For 26 years we've built leaders through experiences that break people out of their comfort zone and into their potential. 120,000+ beneficiaries. Programs in cities and in villages of fifty people. And since 2025, a foundation-wide push into the one skill AI cannot outsource: judgment.

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26
Years
120,000+
Beneficiaries
200+
Communities in 2025
78%
Direct to programs

No slides. No lectures. No theory without bruises.
Machines answer faster every year. Someone still has to decide.

26 years of architecture

ONE SYSTEM.
FROM AGE 12 TO THE BOARDROOM.

We don't run a catalogue of courses. We run a ladder. A student we meet at 14 in a village school can still be with us fifteen years later, leading a team.

01

Know Yourself

ages 12–19

Ora de Carieră Gimnazială · Ora de Carieră · Ora de Carieră 60 · 7 Steps to the Future · Leaders Explore for Students

02

Lead Yourself

ages 19–26

Leaders Explore for University Students · Leaders Experience · THE Leadership School

03

Lead the Team

managers and founders

Leaders Challenge · Leading Ladies · Mentorship Module

04

Lead in the AI Era

cuts across every level

CTRL+ALT+THINK · AI-assisted vocational guidance · Leading THE: AI era

What we build

PROGRAMS THAT LEAVE
A MARK

FLAGSHIP

THE Leadership School

7-day transformational bootcamp, Sibiu

+

220 applications. 150 interviews. 25 places. Day one, phones go in a box and teams build rafts to cross a lake. Day two, a military reaction course at the Land Forces Academy training range in Daia, run by serving officers. Day four, an isolated village of fifty people, where participants repair the home of an 80-year-old woman living alone. Day six, they build a working app entirely with AI tools. Seven days, from tribal leadership to the AI era.

25 participants · 7 days · 70+ hours · 15 practitioners · 4 experiential simulations

FOR MANAGERS

Leaders Challenge©

Six months, four modules, one transformation

+

For managers and founders moving from leading themselves to leading a team. A sailing race on the Black Sea. A game of Go that shows you how you actually play. A real social enterprise to diagnose and fix. And finally the stage of the National Theatre in Bucharest, where participants perform their own life story — to an audience they have to bring themselves. Plus three one-to-one coaching sessions and peer advisory boards between modules.

13 leaders per cohort · 4 modules · 90 hours · June to October

AI LITERACY

CTRL+ALT+THINK

Critical thinking in the AI era

+

Not an AI course — a thinking course. Over 60% of Romanian students already use AI daily, but only 54% feel prepared for a world where machines produce information faster than they can verify it. Fewer than half of Romanian schools have any AI policy at all; 16% ban it outright. We train the muscle in between: metacognition, prompt literacy, fact-checking, and a personal ethical code. Covers 12 of the 15 skills the World Economic Forum names essential for 2030.

3 sessions · 12–14 hours · 30 students per cohort · free to participants

NATIONAL REACH

Ora de Carieră

Romania's largest career guidance program

+

Founded by us, now in its 151st edition. Psychometric profiling with Great People Inside, vocational workshops, and a Living Library where students meet real practitioners instead of reading job descriptions. In 2025 we added AI-assisted vocational guidance. The 60-minute format, Ora de Carieră 60, reached another 5,899 students across 57 partner high schools in a single year.

151 editions · 5,660+ beneficiaries · 1,249 students in 2025 · 5,899 more via the 60-minute format

COMMUNITY

Leaders Explore for High School Students

Leadership education that brings the whole community into the room

+

A community-based leadership program for high school students that works beyond the classroom. We engage students, parents and teachers as part of the same local ecosystem — building self-awareness, initiative and the confidence to act together. The program can grow from individual development into community leadership, helping young people identify local needs, mobilise support and turn ideas into projects that matter where they live.

Students · Parents · Teachers · Community leadership

EQUITY

7 Steps to the Future

Vocational guidance for underserved communities

+

Launched in 2025 for high school students in small and disadvantaged communities — young people with real potential but almost no access to models or opportunities. Seven editions, 202 participants, 30+ communities, plus a roadshow that reached another 528 students across 16 partner high schools. Berbești, Moinești, Filiași, Făgăraș, Bârlad, Curtea de Argeș, Mioveni.

7 editions · 202 participants · 30+ communities · 70 hours

FOR COMPANIES

Custom & CSR Programs

Co-designed leadership journeys for organisations

+

We don't sell off-the-shelf training. We build programs with companies around their actual problems — and we put their name on them. Her Energy Academy with OMV Petrom, developing 20 young women for technical careers in energy. The Next Generation of Innovators with Garrett Motion, now in its 8th edition. Start pentru o Carieră BETON with Heidelberg Materials, across the three counties hosting their plants. The Milky Way with Lactalis, 542 students across seven university centres. Leading Ladies with Deutsche Bank Global Technology, moving women from individual contributor to leadership. Orange Digital Center with Fondation Orange, 756 people trained in digital and AI skills in 2025. Every program comes with pre/post assessment and reporting your ESG and CSR teams can actually use.

Fully customisable · Leadership programs, mentor training, bootcamps, simulations · Measured and reported

Since 2025

MACHINES ANSWER.
PEOPLE STILL DECIDE.

In 2025 we made critical thinking in the AI era a foundation-wide priority, not a product line. It now runs through everything we do — from a 12-year-old beginning to shape their path to a manager leading a team that includes an agent.

For students

CTRL+ALT+THINK

Over 60% of Romanian students already use AI daily, but only 54% feel prepared for it. Fewer than half of Romanian schools have any AI policy; 16% ban it outright. We train metacognition, prompt literacy, fact-checking and a personal ethical code. Covers 12 of the 15 skills the World Economic Forum names essential for 2030. Free to participants.

For organisations

AI Literacy & the EU AI Act

Since February 2025, AI literacy is a legal obligation for organisations under the EU AI Act, and the requirements tighten further in August 2026. Our course delivers documented, compliance-relevant training: 4 to 6 hours in the room plus an online module with eight months of access. Groups of up to 30. Roughly 80% of the time on hands-on prompt engineering, plus AI Act fundamentals, AI ethics and risk assessment.

For leaders

Leadership in 2030

Not how to use AI. How to lead when part of your team is an agent. Four trainings plus a leadership simulation, for people managing teams of three or more.

We moved before the national curriculum did. And before the regulation required it.

The foundation

26 YEARS BUILDING
ONE MODEL.

Everything we run stands on a single Romanian-built model of collaborative leadership, developed and refined since 2000. It sits at the intersection of three axes — meaning, team and systemic thinking. Take one away and the other two stop working.

Axis 01

Meaning

Leadership starts with knowing what you are for. Personal values, vision, and a leadership creed the participant writes themselves. Every long program ends with a stated commitment, not a certificate.

Axis 02

Team

There is no leadership without followership. We work with Belbin team roles and Tuckman's stages of team development, and we put participants in teams where the roles are not assigned — so they discover which one they actually take.

Axis 03

Systemic Thinking

A leader who only optimises their own patch is a manager. We train people to read the whole system — the organisation, the community, the second-order effects — through business simulations and community projects mapped to the UN Sustainable Development Goals.

How the learning actually transfers
01

Experience

A real brief, real stakes, real consequences.

02

Observation

Leadership experts and domain practitioners watch, sometimes incognito.

03

Debrief

Three to six hours of structured reflection. This is where the learning happens.

04

Transfer

Each participant leaves with two or three concrete actions for Monday morning.

Our method

EXPERIENTIAL.
NOT THEORETICAL.

Eight experiential formats, tested and refined over 26 years, grounded in named instruments — Belbin, Tuckman, Merrill & Reed, Gallup StrengthsFinder, SDI, Holland profiling via Great People Inside — and validated against WEF and OECD future-skills frameworks.

Sailing Regatta

A Black Sea race. Primary emotions, turned into fuel.

🍲

The Soup Kitchen

Six hours to plan, source, cook and serve 300 people.

🏪

Take Over a Business

Real business, real customers, real revenue on the line.

🎭

The Theatre Challenge

24 hours to write and stage a play. You find the audience.

🌾

Run a Farm

Build the sales strategy for regenerative agriculture, hands in the soil.

🏫

Rebuild a School

Transform a classroom in an underserved community. Fund it yourselves.

🗺️

Brand a Community

Put a Romanian village or landmark back on the tourist map.

🤖

AI Simulations

Build with machines without outsourcing judgment.

How organisations work with us

LEADERSHIP SIMULATIONS.
TESTED 40+ TIMES.

Our leadership simulations are the format most organisations start with. Teams are given a real brief at 8am and have until mid-afternoon to deliver it. Practitioners observe throughout — sometimes openly, sometimes incognito — and the day closes with a structured debrief of three to six hours. Nothing is hypothetical.

Group size
16 to 100 participants, teams of 10
Format
24 or 48 hours, your choice
Observation
Leadership experts plus domain practitioners
Debrief
3 to 6 hours, structured

Every simulation is co-designed. We align the brief and the KPIs with your learning strategy, your sustainability goals and your CSR priorities — and we can run the same experience at different seniority levels.

New for 2026

LEADERSHIP IN 2030.
FOR TEAMS THAT INCLUDE MACHINES.

A program for people who lead teams of three or more — built for the scenarios they are quietly worried about. Not how to use AI. How to lead when part of your team is an agent.

01Emotional intelligence in the AI era
02Feedback in 2030
03Leading teams through digital burnout, and psychological resilience
04Managing resistance to change
05A leadership simulation, 7 to 24 hours
+50%
hybrid human-AI emotional intelligence
+43%
empathetic, AI-assisted feedback
+40%
change adoption and digital-overload prevention

Measured at program close. Duration and structure adapted to each partner organisation.

Track record

WE DON'T JUST TALK
ABOUT IMPACT

Google Partnership

Highest Grow with Google completion rate globally via Coursera — documented as an international best practice. 25,000 beneficiaries through Digital Garage, the highest reach in Europe.

2024 in Numbers

22 programs delivered. 12,219 people reached. 579 training sessions run. 106 partner organizations. A team of 87 people making it happen.

National Reach

Programs running in urban and rural communities across Romania. Digital education division launched in 2020. Partners span every industry — from energy to tech to banking.

Among the organisations we've worked with

SHARE A VISION. GENERATE IMPACT.
LEAD PROGRESS TOGETHER.

8x8
Adobe
BCR
Bosch
Garrett Motion
Google
Lidl
LSEG
OMV
Orange
Raiffeisen Bank
Renault Group
Romanian Farmers' Club
Romanian Ministry of Education
Servier
UniCredit

A selected group from a wider network of corporate and institutional partners.

Leadership

THE PEOPLE
BEHIND THE MISSION

AG

Alex Gorun

President

Bucharest

AS

Alexandra Simion

Junior Project Manager

Alexandra Țîmpău

Project Manager

BL

Beatrice Lupu

Executive Director

Bucharest

BD

Bianca Dumitrache

Project Assistant

DP

Daniela Papa

Photo & Video Expert

DR

Daria Roman

Project Assistant

EA

Ecaterina Anghel

Project Manager

EP

Elena Pâslaru

Leadership Curriculum Designer

OB

Ovidiu Bujorean

Founder

USA

RP

Raluca Peicea

Project Manager

RC

Robert Csergo

Vice President

Bucharest

ȘV

Ștefan Vasilică

Programs Director

VG

Vlad Ghionaru

Communication Expert

Let's talk

READY TO BUILD
SOMETHING REAL?

Whether you're an organization looking for a leadership partner, a funder exploring impact education, or someone who wants to join the movement — we want to hear from you.

office@leaders.roLeaders Foundation on LinkedIn

Bucharest, Romania
+40 722 631 152