Lucia Stoicescu, Wonderful Romania

You studied Computer Science, then went through roles in software, consultancy, process improvement, and eventually moved into executive leadership. How have those early hands-on technical and operational experiences shaped your approach to being a GM/CEO today?

The early technical and operational roles are incredibly powerful. You need them. This is how I built, piece by piece.  Over time, the technologies change, the methodologies, industries or products change. You just learn to look through more lenses. They teach you how to understand and value what it takes to build high performing teams.  

Given your experience leading companies with strong growth and expanding into multiple markets, alongside consulting on AI strategy and process improvements, how do you decide when to invest in disruptive innovation (new AI, new product lines, research) versus doubling down on optimizing existing offerings?

It's a powerful question, as growth can be achieved in multiple ways. For me R&D should always be a strategic priority. For the rest, it is about playing the competitive strategy game.

Where there is still good market potential with a growth curve ahead of your service/ product offering and what you need is to tap more on this potential, then you can choose to enhance existing offerings, adjust positioning, add more value to your offering as compared to your competitors. Ideally, companies who are able to increase value at a faster rate compared to their competitors and make the overall pricing position same or better at the same time, win market share over the next time period.

However, if we are looking at market potential and we see that value starts to migrate in a slightly different direction, then it is the moment to come up with different products and services. But this needs to pivot fast, that's why R&D is always a priority.

The beauty about markets is that if you are not the one innovating, you can bet there is someone else who is doing it.

You also act as an AI strategy consultant, and you’ve highlighted the importance of advising partners “with clarity, transparency” and helping them make informed decisions. In your view, what are the top risks and ethical challenges organizations in Romania / Europe often overlook when adopting AI?

There are, of course, different categories. We see CEOs who understand very well the role of AI in business today and gave the seat at the table to the proper AI Officers building on competitive advantage.  There are also more cautious Leadership teams for all the right reasons, and they chose to start with use cases with lower risks. But they started. From where I am standing, the risks that might be overlooked are purely implementation/ execution issues, like not having the right guardrails, the proper redesign of the process or keeping decision trails. Also, some organizations underestimate the compliance assessment or misjudge whether their use case is “high risk.”

As WomenTech Ambassador, you are involved in promoting diversity & inclusion, developing leadership skills, and expanding networks for women in tech. What have been your biggest learnings about both what works  - and what doesn’t  - in supporting women's advancement in tech?

Putting the education and expertise at its best use is common sense. Best use to me means giving back. Having the courage to speak from a place of vulnerability, sharing your experience is great, but in my view supporting other women with action is what it works. So read that book your colleague wrote. Give that referral when someone showed true strength. Show up for women leaders when they speak at events. Join them in tech causes. And above all, represent them truthfully in rooms they are not in yet.

You’ve mentioned volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity (VUCA) in past interviews. How do you approach strategic planning and decision-making when the future is highly uncertain?

This is the 3rd year in which I judged at Stevie Awards and I have never seen so many new entry companies with such fast growth and so clear positioning among the applicants.  I have not seen so many pivoting strategies, though.  What I bring in my day-to-day is asking myself: what do we need to do to stay relevant in benchmark positioning? Is the product/service-market-fit so strong tomorrow as it is today? If you are obsessed about customer experience and about the product you are offering, you also need to be mindful of the entire ecosystem needed to deliver this experience. In uncertainty, there is opportunity.

As you move forward, what new capabilities or knowledge are you investing in for the next phase of your career?

Scaling AI capabilities and what does this mean for the new operating models, new business models and customer journey. We now need new ways of doing all of these.

Tell us about Wonderful and its recent expansion into Romania. What innovative offerings does the company bring to the Romanian tech / business landscape?

At Wonderful we are bringing to Romania AI agents that automate 80% of the Customer Service and Sales outbound at scale from day zero, with multilingual Voice, full integration with all Enterprise Systems and flawless implementation across channels.  Where does innovation come from? Natural conversation comes from many layers working together. Wonderful uses specialized models for low latency, interruptions, pronunciation, gender, pace, sentiment, and noise control, reinforced by respectful turn-taking and instant response to create agents that deliver truly natural interactions. 

Romanian enterprises, especially those managing intensive customer service operations, face increasing demands: strict SLAs, complex enterprise integrations, and high call volumes across fragmented support systems (email, voice, chat). Scaling teams during growth or peak periods is challenging, and the need for multilingual capabilities is rising. To succeed, organizations require automation that is powerful, flexible, and fully compliant with GDPR, EU AI Act, DORA, SOC2 and NIS2. Wonderful was built with Enterprise grade security and EU AI Act compliance from the very beginning. You can read about the Romanian launch here.