ALEX M. DASCĂLU

Serial Entrepreneur · Startup Mentor · Ecosystem Builder

Alex M. Dascalu hit a ceiling in corporate life and never let go of what it taught him. During his Executive MBA (EMBA) at Kellogg-WHU, he saw how much capability gets capped by corporate constraints and decided his work would be on the other side of that wall: with founders.

Three years ago, the founders of Beyond Business School (BBS) invited him to join the jury for their EMBA Capstone Projects, then asked him to step in as Capstone Trainer. Over two years, he guided 22 Capstones from early concept to sharper thinking, stronger validation, and, in several cases, market launch — corporate executives, middle managers, and entrepreneurs learning to build the structure of a fundable startup, fast.

Today, he is Managing Director of the Georgian Innovative Startup Accelerator for Georgia’s Innovation and Technology Agency (GITA), taking founders from idea toward scale-up within a year.

He is also Lead Director of the Founder Institute (FI) in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) and the South Caucasus, where he has facilitated the launch of over 80 mostly tech-enabled startups and was recognized as the network’s longest-tenured Europe Director and a Global Mentor with FI, working with founders across Europe, the US, the Middle East, Africa, and Asia.

He also runs international entrepreneurship and intrapreneurship bootcamps for European students, PhD candidates, and research fellows.

In 2018, he received the Startup Visionary Award.

His judgment is grounded in real operator scars. As an executive at Siemens Building Technologies, he learned the org chart, the procurement cycle, and why the last three solutions failed. As an intrapreneur at Deloitte, he led Executive Business Development and headed the German Desk, building new business inside a Big Four firm. He has served on the board of a state-owned enterprise and advised ventures with the Larta Institute. He advised four seasons of Imperiul Leilor (Romania’s Shark Tank / Dragons’ Den), preparing candidates to pitch investors — so he has seen what breaks under pressure and what holds.

His expertise reaches into digital transformation and emerging technologies, from the Internet of Things (IoT) to artificial intelligence (AI).

His read on the moment: AI compresses building, research, and analysis. What it does not compress is domain expertise, relationships, and judgment and that, he argues, is how this region produces global winners.

ALINA ILIE

EU Project Coordinator

Alina Ilie is a project coordinator with over 20 years of professional experience, built at the intersection of communications, project management, and social development.

She is a graduate of the Faculty of Sociology and Social Work at the University of Bucharest, specializing in Social Work – Family and Child (2005), and holds a master’s degree in Opinion Polls, Marketing and Advertising from the same faculty (2008). Her professional training is complemented by certifications relevant to the field of European projects, including a Trainer Certificate, a Project Manager Certificate, and a Digital Skills Certificate.

She began her career in 2003 in the advertising industry, working at leading agencies such as Bates 141, Ogilvy & Mather, Lowe & Partners, and Propaganda Advertising, where she progressed from Junior Account Executive to Account Director. During this period, she coordinated brand, image, and awareness campaigns for top-tier companies and institutions: Coca-Cola, Gillette, Unilever, British American Tobacco, IBM Romania, DHL, Lenovo Romania, Ferrero, Kia Romania, Dr. Oetker, UNICEF, the Romanian Ministry of Tourism, and many others.

Among the large-scale projects she coordinated, several stand out: the fundraising campaign “An Investment in the Future of the Past,” carried out in partnership with the French Embassy, the U.S. Embassy, and the National Museum of Art of Romania, dedicated to the restoration and conservation of heritage works; the awareness campaigns developed for the Romanian Red Cross; and the unconventional campaign to attract young audiences to the Romanian National Opera – a project that drew approximately 2,000 spectators to the season-opening concert and received an award for effectiveness at the Portorož International Festival.

Since 2014, Alina Ilie has been active in the field of EU-funded projects, working across the POSDRU, POCU, and, currently, PEO programmes. She has held a variety of positions within multiple consortia – from project coordinator and training coordinator to information campaign organization expert, evaluation expert, career counsellor, and start-up scheme coordinator – which has given her a comprehensive perspective on the entire life cycle of a European project: from the signing of the financing contract, budgeting, and implementation, through to reporting, ex-post monitoring, and archiving.

An important component of her work is start-up financing: she has evaluated, implemented, and monitored approximately 60 newly established businesses – including social economy structures (SES) – in the West, Centre, and South-Muntenia regions, also covering their sustainability phase.