Elena is a graduate of the Polytechnic University of Bucharest, where she obtained a Bachelor of Engineering from the Electronics, Telecommunications and Information Technology unit, and of Harvard, where she holds a Masters in Business Administration from Harvard Business School. She has a broad working experience, having worked both in Romania and abroad. During her engineering studies at the Polytechnic University, she worked as a research assistant in the Physics Department in Bucharest, Romania and Taipei, Taiwan. After she graduated she continued her career in Bucharest, where she worked at a local Cisco academy as a technical trainer and at Orange Romania as a telecom engineer. One year and a half later she joined Orange’s Headquarters in Paris, France, in a Project Management role. With almost five years of technical and managerial experience, she moved to Boston, USA, to study business administration. During the summer she interned at Planetary Power Inc. in Seattle WA, a startup founded by the same people who founded Planetary Resources Inc. – a competitor of SpaceX. After graduating from Harvard, Elena returned to Romania and joined the Ministry of Labor during the Ciolos administration, in an advisory role. Currently Elena is pursuing business consulting opportunities. As hobbies Elena enjoys learning foreign languages, debating, traveling, skiing and badminton.