Hi, I am Elena.
My mantra is “Tech is the Tool. Human is the Goal.”
ACADEMIC
RECORDS
- International Executive MBA | Italy, GSOM Polimi | 2026
- MSc in Computer Vision | UK, University of Guildford | 2016
- BSc in Biomedical Engineering | Italy, University of Pisa | 2014
ABOUTME
I grew up in Moldova with both parents working abroad.
My grandmother and non-family members raised me. So did stubbornness, and a stack of textbooks that made me fall in love with science.
Nobody taught me independence. I built it because there was no other option.
When there is no safety net, you figure out fast which skills hold your weight and which are decoration.
THE GIRL WHODID BOTH
Physics Olympiad finalist. Published poet. Same girl, same school.
Everyone said pick a lane. I picked two.
The equations taught me precision. The poems taught me that precision means nothing if people do not feel what you are saying. I have spent the rest of my career sitting in that gap.
THE YEAREVERYTHINGBROKE
I failed the medical school entrance exam. My father cut off financial support.
At 20, I packed a bag and left home.
I had a scholarship, a suitcase, and a belief that hard work will be enough.
I won a scholarship for Biomedical Engineering at Pisa. Paid for everything myself through scholarship and part-time work.
My thesis connected brain signals to computer interfaces exploring how humans and machines could understand each other.
I did not know it then, but I had already found my subject.
THEPRICE
I moved to England for an internship at Brunel University. I finished it two months earlier. A neuroimaging project — mapping brain data to cortical surface using multi-voxel pattern analysis of fMRI scans. The kind of work that sounds like a sentence from a textbook but felt like solving a puzzle nobody had handed me the pieces for.
I applied for a Masters in Computer Vision at Surrey University. Got accepted.
Then the invoice arrived. I was not an EU citizen. Full international tuition. No scholarship this time.
Five months of labour to earn the right to study. One year of study to earn the career. That is the exchange rate when nobody is subsidizing your ambition.
So I worked. Five months, full days, every day, until I had the money. Then I enrolled.
Wrote a thesis on neural networks for breast cancer distorsion — in 2014, before anyone called it AI.
Graduated on time. High marks. A job offer the day after graduation.
I did not stop because stopping felt more dangerous than exhaustion. There is a version of determination that is not inspirational at all. It is just the only gear you have left.
THEBUILDER
Three countries. Five languages. Ten years of making things that did not exist before I walked in.
United Kingdom
First job in the UK — software engineer. Promoted in six months. Outgrew the junior developers within 6 months. Not smarter. Just unwilling to stop learning when the job description ended.
Milan
One of Italy's largest media companies handed me million-dollar digital transformation projects. No playbook. No precedent. I drew the blueprint, built the team, shipped the system. That is where I learned the thing that now drives everything I do:
Consulting widened the lens. Different industries, different cultures, same blind spot every time. Processes mapped. Tools deployed. But nobody had sat down with the people whose jobs were about to change and asked them what they thought about it. I decided that would become my mission.
The technology was never the hard part. The hard part was getting people to trust it enough to change how they work.
Every move stacked a layer. But the layers were not random. They were converging.
Technical depth. Cultural fluency. The ability to translate between engineers and boards. And underneath all of it, a growing conviction: the organizations that will lead the next decade are the ones that govern AI with empathy and clear intent — making innovation make sense to the human beings using it.
Milestones
2016
United Kingdom
Software development. Promoted in 6 months.
2017
Milan
In-house transformation. Million-dollar projects.
2020
Milan
Enterprise consulting. Data platform governance.
2022
Milan
Advisory consulting. Cross-industry breadth.
2024
Milan
Executive MBA. MedTech dissertation.
2026
Next
Creative WorkIn progress
THEstrategicCHANGELEADER
Organizations pour millions into AI systems. They map processes. Train users. Launch. And then adoption stalls. Teams resist. Leaders call it “change fatigue”.
The real problem is less dramatic. Nobody sat down with the people affected and negotiated what this change actually means — for their work, their role, their future. Without that conversation, every transformation is a mandate dressed as an invitation.
I am here to build the foundation, share the vision, and mentor the women whose legacy will eventually outlast my own.
My legacy is not simply what I build, but what others build because I was there.