Adrian Stanciu: ”The essential thing to understand about failure is that although it is your own, it is not actually yours. You did not fail, but your actions resulted in failure. This dissociation between you and your actions will allow you to look at failures as opportunities for growth. I don’t think you have to love failure, but it is essential not to hate it”
Fuckup Nights Bucharest, XXV edition: Adrian Stanciu – renowned entrepreneur and business and leadership consultant, Andra Munteanu – entrepreneur and co-founder of Narada and Olimpia Melinte – actress, reveal the lessons learned from their career challenges
Associate Dean BISM, renowned entrepreneur and business and leadership consultant, Andra Munteanu – entrepreneur and co-founder of Narada, and Olimpia Melinte – actress, will tell on the stage of the XXVth edition of Fuckup Nights Bucharest (FUN) about the challenging moments in their careers and how they contributed to their evolution.
The event will take place on May 22, 2025, at the Bucharest International School of Management (BISM), 99 Dacia Boulevard, starting at 18:00.
This is the first time DiFine PR and Bucharest International School of Management (BISM) are collaborating to organize Fuckup Nights Bucharest, one of the most courageous series of events that brings to the public authentic stories of professional failures and encourages the transformation of mistakes into sources of learning and open dialogue.
The partnership brings together DiFine PR’s strategic communications expertise and BISM’s progressive educational vision in a collaboration that emphasizes transparency, learning from failures and authentic entrepreneurial development.
”We are generations that looked at failure with fear, shame, resistance. We saw it as a radical and irretrievable loss. As society has evolved, we have learned that failure is not about giving up and being afraid to try again, but about looking at it and treating it from a different, constructive perspective – as a valuable platform for evolution. Failure is about allowing yourself to grow with each experience. Our guests, with unique career paths and from complementary areas, will share the moments that have shaped their careers and equipped them more competently for their next experiences. We enjoy partnering with BISM, where we feel at home because we have attended their courses, are close to the best leaders in the industry, and share the same mission and values”, says Diana Iosu, founder of DiFine PR and organiser of Fuckup Nights Bucharest.
”The partnership was born out of a shared vision: the need to bring more honesty to conversations about the professional and personal journeys of Romanian leaders and entrepreneurs. In an environment where success is often idealized, Fuckup Nights provides a much-needed platform where failures are recognized as an integral part of the growth process. Our involvement comes as a natural extension of our commitment to applied entrepreneurship education. Fuckup Nights thus becomes an alternative learning space where students, alumni and the wider community have the opportunity to explore the lessons behind real mistakes and build a culture of resilience”, says Laura Lăzărescu, Managing Partner BISM.
For about 2 hours, the speakers will share with the audience personal stories of key moments that have influenced their professional trajectory and brought them valuable conclusions for the future. Attendees will be able to draw useful lessons from the speakers’ experiences, and then address their queries directly in interactive Q&A sessions.
Adrian Stanciu is Associate Dean at Bucharest International School of Management (BISM), consultant in strategy and organizational culture, with experience in transformation projects for companies in the banking, telecom and energy sectors. Co-founder of the Executive MBA program Maastricht School of Management Romania, he teaches leadership and change management and frequently works with top management teams in restructuring and strategic realignment processes. He is active in the public space through opinion articles, podcasts and conferences, where he addresses topics related to leadership, organizational culture and the future of work. For Adrian, talking about failure is courage, transparency and authenticity.
”What I think it’s essential to understand about failure is that failure, although it is your own, is not in fact your own. You have not failed but your actions have resulted in failure. This dissociation between you and your actions will allow you to look at failures as opportunities for growth. I don’t think you have to love failure, but it’s essential not to hate it”, says Adrian Stanciu.
Andra Munteanu is the co-founder of Narada, an NGO in the field of education through whose projects she has influenced the lives of over 500,000 students in the country. A serial entrepreneur and civic activist since she was a teenager, Andra has founded and developed companies in multiple fields, before focusing her expertise and vision on innovation in education. She is the initiator of an ambitious vision that, since 2017, aims to transform education by mobilizing the community and using technology to ensure every child has access to a relevant education system for the future.
What does failure look like when everything looks, on paper, like a success? Sometimes, the hardest failure is not the collapse, but the success that takes us far away from who we were in the beginning. Andra will talk about her efforts to raise Narada, swayed by the ethos of the society, to a point where, being too big, it drifted away from its mission.
” I do not believe that continuous growth is possible or desirable. Sometimes growth can turn into failure. But we rarely see what seems like failure at one point in time in the same light in retrospect. More often than not, the most resounding successes are a failure at first sight”, explains Andra Munteanu.
Olimpia Melinte is a film, television and theater actress with a solid and nuanced career, carefully built both in Romania and internationally. She has become known for the inner strength and sensitivity with which she tackles a wide range of roles – from vulnerable characters to strong women facing complicated choices. She has been nominated for a Goya Award for her role in Canibal, awarded by the Spanish Actors Guild, and has had her films officially selected at prestigious festivals such as Locarno, Venice, San Sebastián and Berlin. Among the important productions in which she has starred are the TV series Vlad and the Moromeții series directed by Stere Gulea.
Olimpia believes that only by speaking honestly about failure can we truly learn what success really means.
” In the world of arts, ‘no’ is a constant. It’s almost a condition of the job: hearing ‘you’re not right’, ‘we’ll try something else’, ‘not this time’. It’s not just about lost roles. Sometimes you lose confidence, rhythm, meaning. And, perhaps hardest of all, you lose a part of you that thought you had everything under control. But failure has a hidden gift. It crushes the ego, and it leaves the man behind. And yet, this is how we can learn, feel, move on, because vulnerability is not weakness, but where courage is born”, says Olimpia Melinte.
The event will be moderated by journalist Julia Nagy, known for her long experience in radio and television.
Fuckup Nights Bucharest is part of a series of global events taking place in 215 cities in 62 countries around the world, and changing perspectives on career failure. It equally targets small and large entrepreneurs, corporate workers, freelancers and students.
Some of the previous editions of Fuckup Nights Bucharest are available here: Vol I, Vol II, Vol III, Vol VI, Vol X, Vol XII.
The partners of the event are: BISM (Bucharest International School of Management), FAN Courier, Radio Guerilla, Complice, Republica BIO, Fonduri Structurale, Bizilive, Learning Network, Psychologies, IQAds, SMARK, IQool, Revista CARIERE, Techcelerator, ROTSA – Romanian Tech Startups Association.
Tickets are available on iabilet.ro.
More details on the event are available on Facebook, Instagram și LinkedIn.
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About DiFine PR
DiFine PR is a full services communications agency that combines the team’s solid experience of over 20 years, both nationally and internationally, with the satisfaction of creating success stories. Besides full PR, communication and business consulting services, the agency also organizes technology and business events (e.g. NASA Space Apps Challenge, TechFest, Fuckup Nights Bucharest). The agency’s client portfolio includes NN, Stefanini, TH Essers, Dulcinella, Seedblink, GapMinder VC, Seedblink, FintechOS, Techcelerator, ROTSA (Romanian Tech Startups Association), Examin.ai, Goldring, Klass Wagen, Eyerim, Bricklofts, Undelucram.ro, Restart Energy, Tema Energy, Verita International School, Bitcoin Romania. Over the six years since its launch, DiFine PR has worked with over 250 tech startups.
