Some paths aren’t chosen. They choose you.
If I were to look back for the moment when branding became my calling rather than just another career step, it would be easy to say “in 2000.” But the truth is that year wasn’t a beginning — it was a recognition. A meeting with an inner truth I had been carrying without knowing it.
I was at Connex, a brand that pulsed like a living organism in Romania. I was part of a team vibrating with energy, in an environment where communication and advertising weren’t just jobs, but a way of breathing. I felt I belonged there, even if I didn’t yet know how.
One day, a few colleagues and I were invited to an interview for a marketing publication. A seemingly ordinary initiative. We were asked to talk about branding in Romania, about what made the country’s most beloved brand special, and about how we saw the future of the profession.
Among the technical and polished answers, something unexpected surfaced — something I had never said out loud before:
“I see myself in brand consulting.”
It wasn’t a choice.
It was a recognition.
A truth I had, but had never formulated.
And, as it sometimes happens in life, the moment you speak your truth, the path lights up. Not fully, not suddenly, but enough to know where to step next.
Two years later, I entered the world of brand consulting. I spent the next three years in the first professional branding agency in Romania, a period in which I began to understand how vast this field is — how much territory it covers, how much depth it hides, and how many possibilities unfold when you truly begin to explore it.
Then, in 2005, I founded Brandfusion.
If someone asked me what I was like back then, I’d say I was extremely enthusiastic and dangerously sincere in my belief that I could help Romanian businesses rise to the level of international brands. I was fascinated by their ambition, their attempts, their still-fragile courage.
In those early years, something pulled me in deeply: the inner life of organizations.
People.
The way a brand comes alive — or dies — in daily behaviors.
I believed, and still do, that a rebranding doesn’t end with a new logo; it only begins when people start living the new identity. When values turn into decisions. When purpose becomes action. When the brand’s attitude is felt in the first “hello” and the last email.
But Romanian business reality hit quickly. Few companies were ready to bring the brand down from PowerPoint into everyday life. Marketing went in one direction, HR in another, client service somewhere else, corporate communication in its own world. And the brand often remained a beautiful design the organization didn’t yet know how to inhabit.
So my path recalibrated itself almost naturally.
Instead of becoming the consultant who implements rebranding internally, I began taking on strategy and identity projects. They came naturally, from people who knew me, who had seen how I think, and who trusted me. Their trust wasn’t just a professional beginning — it was the beginning of a path.
I remember the first projects like foundation stones.
Then the first collaborations.
Then the first people who became colleagues.
And then, slowly, a team. A culture. A way of working.
Brandfusion grew organically, like everything built with authenticity and patience. Project after project, audit after audit, presentation after presentation. We worked hard, learned immensely, and built something that began to resemble a “we.”
Our first international recognition came sooner than expected. Two projects — the Austral rebranding and the identity refresh with environmental branding for Novensys — received awards.
I remember exactly what I felt.
Not pride, but confirmation.
Confirmation that the truth spoken in 2000 wasn’t a coincidence.
That the path wasn’t a detour, but the direction itself.
That it wasn’t only my profession settling into place, but my purpose as an entrepreneur in the creative industry.
Today, when I look back, I see even more clearly that this entire journey — the people, the team, the clients, the projects, the struggles, the joys, the awards — is nothing but the echo of that first sentence spoken in an interview that seemed ordinary:
“Branding is my place.”
Not a phase.
A path.
