The Comité Directeur still has one available place: Financial Director. Ioana Duca applied for this possition, currently being the interim Financial Director. She is a proud member of AEGEE-Cluj-Napoca and always willing to discover more of the AEGEE mystery. Read the answers she gave to The AEGEEan to find out more about her!

The AEGEEan: Ioana, you started in AEGEE-Cluj-Napoca as secretary, then president, and now you are running for the position of Financial Director of AEGEE-Europe. Do you think your experiences in your local helped you?

Ioana: I started in 2010 and I was Secretary, President and Summer University (SU) Coordinator, and now I’m Board Advisor. All the experience and work in the board of AEGEE-Cluj-Napoca helped me a lot to grow and to understand a lot of things. Even if I was never Treasurer in my board, I worked very close with all the treasurers, I helped them and supported them since I was Secretary. Moreover I was in contact with our accounter all the time, working with her and helping her, dealing with our finances. And of course all the experience with all the budgets for all our local events (SU, European Days of Languages, etc) and being Treasurer in several SUs helped me a lot.

How did the experience you gathered while being a CD assistant influence you?

Being CD assistant influenced me a lot. First, I was assistant for the archives in 2012 for two months. During this period I had the chance to be in Brussels, to understand how life as CD is and also to understand the history of AEGEE and all the processes better, as I was working with the archives. Since then I was thinking that if I will ever want to run for CD, I will probably choose the position of Financial Director, but it was to early for me, I needed to grow. My second experience as CD assistant was this year as Financial Intern, which is more close to finances. It helped me a lot to get more experience and to understand even better the work of Financial Director, dealing with budgets for several projects, reimbursements, reports, preparation for Agora etc. I was very lucky to have the experience of working with two CD teams and to see different people, different teams and different dynamics. Understanding the people and your team is as important as having enough experience for the position.

You are the interim Financial Director of AEGEE-Europe since August, so the position for the Financial Director was free before and during Agora Patra. Why didn’t you run back then?

As you can read in my candidature it was a problem of principles. After I started my term as Financial Intern, I got an internship. One of the most important things for me is to respect my commitments and promises, so I couldn’t run without solving this problem first. But I can say that during Agora Patra I was very sad because of the situation (people around me can confirm) and moreover I was sad that nobody ran for the position of Financial Director. After Agora Patra and during the open call for interim Financial Director, the situation with my internship was resolved so I was finally free to apply. I was very relieved!

Sometimes it is hard to find a candidate for the Financial Director position. Have you thought about any strategy or plan to find candidates for the next term?

It is true that it is hard to find a candidate for the Financial Director (FD) position, but I’m not planning to hunt people down to apply for this position. I don’t have any strategy as I don’t think this is the way, but I’m not saying that I don’t care if somebody is applying or not for this position. I care a lot and I will give all the necessary support to the people who will be interested to become FD. Maybe these people can come in Brussels for a few weeks before Agora Oviedo so they can see and understand the work of FD better, but I will not force people to run. One of the most important things is to be aware of the tasks and to want to do all these tasks and then you can learn a lot.

Do you still keep in touch with your local? Do they support you?

Of course I still keep in touch with my local. I’m very proud of my local and the people from my local. They are the reason that I am here, without them nothing of these would have  happened. In this moment I’m in the Advisory Board of my local, I’m still following everything that is happening and giving all the necessary support for all the events, recruitments or bureaucratic staff. Sometimes it is difficult to find time for this, but they know that I’m there for them anytime they need my help or my support. They support me a lot! And I want to make them proud of me as I’m proud of them!

How do you get along with the new CD and living in the same house with them?

The new CD is actually my 3^rd CD, so this is not a new experience for me. It is interesting and it is good that I had all these experiences with previous teams, it helped me a lot in some situations. The difference is that this is my CD and I’m not only an assistant anymore. I love my CD and I feel we are like a family, sharing all good and bad moments and not only those related with work and AEGEE, so like a true family. We are not perfect (as there is no perfection, no perfect family in this world and who is saying this, usually is hiding something or has no clue about real life), but we are growing together. And yes we are a family (it’s not just for the eyes of the world) as we are working together, we are sharing our thoughts, we are eating together, cleaning the house and supporting each other in good or bad moments (when we have some good news or results, or when we have stressful days before some deadlines). The most important thing is that we are together!

Written by Raluca Radu, AEGEE-Cluj-Napoca

During Spring Agora-Patra 2014, unfortunately there was no candidate for Financial Director for the Comité Directeur 2014-2015. Soon after Agora-Patra, an open call was issued to find an Interim Financial Director of AEGEE-Europe until Agora-Cagliari. According to the open call,  it is expected that this person will officially run for this position in front of the Agora to be fully elected by the network. Ioana Duca, member of AEGEE-Cluj-Napoca since April 2010, has been selected for this position and she will act as CD assistant, with no voting rights in the CD, as she was not voted by the Agora. 

How have you been involved in AEGEE until now, both  on local and European level?

I joined AEGEE in April 2010 and since then I was involved a lot on local level as I’m in AEGEE Cluj-Napoca’s board since April 2011 ( Secretary 2011-2012, President 2012-2013, SU Coordinator 2013-2014 and now as Board Adviser). I have organized a lot of events in my local: 6 SU’s, local trainings, network meetings, European Days of Languages, Culture Action Days, recruitment and SU presentations. I was mentor of AEGEE-Ploieşti for 1 year and trainer in some LTC’s for AEGEE-Iaşi and some other small things.

On European level, I was not involved that much, but enough to get some experience as I was CD Assistant for 2 months in 2012 working with archives and Financial Intern since 17th of March this year.

What pushed you to apply for the open call issued by the CD?

The fact that I liked to work with finances and budgets. I was thinking “I’m already working as financial intern and I know almost everything related with the task, why not?”

Why didn’t you run for the position before, at Agora-Patra since you were present?

I didn’t run at Agora-Patra because of some of my principles. At that moment I already had another commitment, an internship in Brussels due to start at the beginning of June. For me it is very important to respect my commitments, even if I wanted to candidate I had to solve somehow this situation with my internship first.

Everything  got solved just on time, one week before I was supposed to start my internship it was called off. “Everything happens for a reason” I was thinking. I considered it a sign and I applied for Interim Financial Director.

You are already living in Brusells in the CD house as financial assistant of Anna Gots, yet next year you will be working with a whole new CD. How will it be different for you?

I don’t see big differences, but of course it will be different. Mostly because of the amount of responsibilities and the fact that I will work in a new team. Lucky me, I already had some experience in working with two CD’s already. This will be the 3rd CD I will work with and, most of all, it will be my CD  as I will not be only an assistant.

You will be Interim Financial Director until Agora-Cagliari. Are you planning to stay after the Agora?

I will be Interim Financial Director untilAgora-Cagliari, but my plan is to continue, so I will run at Agora-Cagliari because I want to be with my new team until the end of the CD’s term. I’m looking forward to work with them.