Mariana Ganea is the guest writer of January 2014 on Romania-Insider.com. To be part of our guest writer program, sign up here.   Every month, we reward the most active guest writer of the previous month by posting a story about them.

Mariana Ganea was born in Bucharest and studied economics. Her career began as economist specialized in financial analysis and price policy, but, after few years of practice she re-orientated to the banking activity.

In banking she worked in various operative departments from the Settlement Department and International Relations to the Treasury. Accumulating experience in high banking areas, she wanted to share her professional expertise to bank employees so she decided to work in the training department.

As a trainer and, later, as a training coordinator she initiated several specialized training programs in treasury management and development of the branch managers’ skills. At the same time she wrote training materials and delivered courses in banking techniques areas, in soft skills and management.

In parallel with the training banking activity she collaborated with various universities and training firms delivering courses, tutoring workshops and financial modules in master programs. To complete her knowledge, Mariana received a PhD in Economics with a doctoral thesis which was a comparative study of the economic transition in the ex-Communist countries from Central Europe.

During her permanent professional and personal development process she studied and, as she likes to say, “was captivated” by the Neurolinguistical Program, and, after she graduated a one year training program she implemented – for the first time in her organization- NPL techniques in soft skills training programs.

Several years later when her activity in the bank training department developed she participated in the first bank employees assessment process in Romania, writing occupational standards and evaluating the competencies of the branch managers in areas such as profitability, asset and liabilities management.

When the training department became the first corporate academy and knowledge department in the banking system, Mariana created several batteries of tests about retail and corporate bank products and she organized and sustained workshops based on e-learning platform materials.

Beyond all these, Mariana believes her main achievement in banking as training coordinator is creating the regional trainers system which had several phases (employee selection, training process, mentoring, monitoring and coordinating the regional trainers), in which she was actively involved.

After more than 10 years in banking, taking into account her expertise and her wish to share it to much more banking employees, Mariana moved to a specialized financial banking training institute where she developed her knowledge and skills, working, along the years, as training center manager office, development training manager office, research office manager and training consultant.

In the institute she created research studies about European banking training activity and various studies about specific banking areas and/or training and she was in charge of the training needs analysis.

At the same time, she considers she had a great opportunity to work as expert in several European Projects, setting banking occupational analysis, banking occupational standards with associated qualifications, curricula based on occupational analysis and delivering training courses on occupational standards basis.

Being an adept with the English Saxon professional training and evaluating system, when Romania began to implement a system of the professional certification, Mariana obtained the certification as authorized trainer and the authorized evaluator.

At present moment Mariana is an authorized freelancer (PFA) who provides: financial banking, management and soft skills trainings (including customized), professional competencies evaluations, consultancy in finance and banking issues, consultancy in communication and research studies (economics, financial, banking, training market).

All activities which Mariana delivers are based on her practical expertise in specific professional areas and in learning activities (training, tutoring, and coaching).

She develops lifelong learning activities focusing on competences using experiential learning methods and applying interactive communication and team working. Her trainings are based on periodically updated training materials to market and customer’s requirements. In her work, Mariana strongly respects the values which she set herself: excellence, honesty, respect, pragmatism and flexibility.

Beyond her professional carrier Mariana, believes it is important to balance your life practicing various and agreeable hobbies. She discovered her hobby for writing while being a guest writer with Romania-Insider.com.

In her articles, Mariana explored her hobbies: traveling (see Discover Romania articles), literature and music (see Famous Romanians articles and Comments articles), education issues , politics and economy.

Mariana is passionate about maintaining a healthy life style and is a nature and animal lover. In her spare time, she prefers to walk in the park with her dog, go to the gym and, above all, to watch the sunrise and the sunset on the sea beach.

At present, she is inspired by these two famous quotes:

“What doesn’t destroy me makes me stronger” Friedrich Nietzsche

“Keep love in your heart. A life without it is like a sunless garden when the flowers are dead” Oscar Wilde