Member Spotlight Ana Bostan

1.Can you tell us a bit about your background and your role?

I am a proud Amsterdam-er born in Moldova (officially Soviet Union at the time – it’s not that often one gets to be older than their own country). I’ve always been curious about the world, so I travelled a lot for my education and studies. After having studied in Italy and Switzerland, I landed in Amsterdam to complete my higher education. Ever since then I fell in love with Amsterdam and discovered a 2^nd family at Kalypso.

Over five years later, here I am, a manager at Kalypso where I have the pleasure and opportunity to serve clients across various industries with one focus area – product innovation – the heart of any firm. In my role I get to explore, learn, and drive change in bringing our clients closer to the digital future of their products.

2.Why are you passionate about the mission of the LEAD Network?

LEAD is supporting companies to “create more sustainable value by leveraging the full talent pool”. In a world driven by immediate impact and ever decreasing business cycles focus on long term objectives and sustainable results is a competitive advantage.

I appreciate that LEAD is focusing on fundamental and significant impacts from both bottom-up, but also top-down:

• educating both individual female leaders as well as entire D&I organizations in the retail and CPG industries and
• setting quantitative long term targets for leadership representatives to aim for.

3. Is there one person you could attribute a big piece of your success to?

Not only one, many – I’m a blessed person to have met early in my career women who set me on the right course early in my life …

• Leigh Ann Arthur, my first manager – she was my pillar at the inception of my career. Prior to working with Leigh Ann I had never felt so empowered and supported by another woman
• Linda Warner, the woman who coached me every step during my hiring process. I never knew that a near stranger (and ultimately a dear friend) could have so much passion for another person’s success

Tiffany Le Brun, my role model for a consultant – she taught me by example how to be a leader behind the leader – she’s a character with the highest character I’ve met in consulting.

4. What would you tell your younger self to ease her heart?

• Listen to your intuition – finding yourself ploughing through ‘it’ all the time may be a sign you should drop ‘it’ completely. Things meant to be – more often than not – are flowing easier than one would anticipate;
• Perfection is not always a quality – be more agile, do more minimum viable products and sprints with your career, education, life experience projects;
• Trust yourself more – in the absence of work and life experiences one is deprived of self-discovery opportunities, hence when you’re at the beginning of the road – trust that you possess more positive asymmetries than you anticipate.