Dana Tudor – A Journey through Media, Coaching, and Women’s Leadership

Discover the story of Dana Tudor – consultant, coach, and founder of Chic-Elite.ro – and her journey from media to women’s leadership.

Dana Tudor, communication consultant and coach, journalist, entrepreneur. “What are we building this year?” No, she is not a house builder, but a communication project builder, and this is one of the big questions that has followed her since she began her professional life. “Is it time to say that yes, I know this field, after 30 years in media and communication?” is another. Dana Tudor is a communication consultant and coach, founder of Chic-Elite.ro, the female leadership platform. She launched Eva.ro, was editor-in-chief of Cariere magazine and in 2010 founded the Buticul de Inspirație agency. Alongside some of the best professionals on the market in their field, the agency responds quickly, with concrete solutions (Dana calls them “braincrafts”), to companies, brands and leaders who want to amplify their unique voice.

C&B: If we were to look at a narrative thread of your career or business, what were the key moments that defined you?
Dana Tudor: Looking back, I realize that the projects that define my professional path have often been in the area of ​​pioneering and building projects. I stubbornly took the entrance exam to the Faculty of Communication and Public Relations, recently established at the University of Bucharest. It was a field that 30 years ago, only a few people and a handful of DCRP-ists, as we, the students of this faculty, proudly called ourselves, had heard of.

Next came HR. Well, when my publisher at the time told me, around the early 2000s, that I would be in charge of the HR column of Biz magazine (the first business “glossy” in Romania), a lump stopped in my throat: I didn’t even know what he was talking about, much less what topics related to this field would be of interest. How many knew what HR was? I started writing about human resources, education and leadership, and audience data would show that it was one of the most read columns of the magazine. It is a field that I have remained close to to this day, thanks to the clients and projects I had.

The same publisher proposed that I take care of, in parallel with the column I had at Biz magazine, the launch and coordination of an internet project, the first website in Romania dedicated to women: Eva.ro. This was where the greatest investment of energy and soul was. We went to meetings, talked about the online environment, newsletters, interactivity, things that are now commonplace, but which at the time were something exotic, at best, and often misunderstood. Eva.ro would become one of the first brands in the Romanian online world and, in all the 7 years that I was the project manager of the site, it was in first place in terms of traffic, in the category of sites dedicated to women.

In the summer of 2010, I entered entrepreneurship, founding the communication agency Buticul de Inspirație. At that time, we were again discussing terms rarely used in the business environment, which are very fashionable today, such as personal brand or thought leadership.

My interest in the field of personal development materialized in the fall of 2010, when, as editor-in-chief of the magazine Cariere, I coordinated the relaunch process of the publication. And in 2015, I launched the women’s development and leadership website Chic-Elite.ro, together with my high school friend Cristina Lincu, a remarkable and creative writer. And during the pandemic, I made a fascinating journey into the world of coaching, following a consistent training with the high-quality professional and human team of the Coaching Partners school.

C&B: What was the first concrete step in building the Chic Elite brand and community?
Dana Tudor: The discussions with Cristina Lincu, co-founder, also a community creator, after which I chose the name Chic-Elite, I put the structure, the launch campaign on paper, I created the logo and the slogan.

C&B: Is there a dream or ambition that has always guided you, regardless of obstacles?
Dana Tudor: Yes. Ambition has been cultivated in me since childhood and is a character trait that has helped me find solutions in the most difficult situations. And indeed, there are dreams that I had that seemed impossible to achieve, but animated with meaning, determination and a lot of work, I saw them become reality, in a way that was perhaps even more fulfilling than I had dared to dream. I started to look more carefully at dreams and dreams, following discussions with Ana Maria Ștefănescu, a former high school classmate, the first certified Dream Teacher in Romania, currently a Master Dream Teacher.

C&B: What did you look like at the beginning of the journey and how do you feel you have transformed yourself so far?

Dana Tudor: I was a teenager with a lot of energy, enthusiasm and ambition, without realizing what valuable resources they are. At school we are evaluated by how well we know the lesson, not at all by our personality and the value we bring to the environment we are in. How helpful it would be to have as many benchmarks related to idour entity, at the beginning of the journey, don’t you think?

In the meantime, I learned to manage these resources more carefully and to value them. Added to this was the experience of working with many people and exposure to diverse situations, which come with the ability to “read” certain everyday situations relatively quickly, which sometimes gives a minus to enthusiasm, but a plus to the ability to listen and understand.

C&B: If we met with your team or collaborators, what do you think they would say about you?

Dana Tudor: Asking for such feedback is an exercise that I recommend! I still have in my heart the unexpected appreciations that I received from those I worked with.

For this interview, I asked Cristina to answer this question and here’s what I found out: “I’ve known Dana since my teenage years and I can say that, from a professional point of view, we grew up together, later being college and, implicitly, industry colleagues. Thus, our partnership started early, when we were both discovering and perfecting our skills, talents and goals. Dana is, first and foremost, an extremely loyal partner, very well prepared, constantly self-improving and always one step ahead of everyone else, so that unforeseen situations are always defeated when I have her by my side. In fact, I’m lucky because, in addition to an excellent business partner and collaborator – as an example, see the Chic-Elite.ro platform – I have in Dana one of those friends you have for life, a solid point of reference, when everything seems to be chaos around me. She is not only talented, rigorous, a consummate professional, attentive to the last detail, but and because he has a vast personal culture that subtly leaves its mark on each of his projects, which gives him the elegance and refinement that we all seek today, especially when automation and algorithms have somewhat taken over the reins of creativity”.

C&B: What is the most important decision you have made that changed your trajectory?

Dana Tudor: There were several. The first was when, at the age of 18, on a window sill in the Casa Presei Libere, on half an A4 sheet – the one that absorbed the ink – I wrote my CV with a pen (far from what we know today about writing a CV). That half a sheet of paper took me to the editorial office of the most widely read newspaper in Romania at the time and from there to one of the most beautiful jobs on earth, according to a forgotten – or ignored? – dream from high school, when in my diary I asked myself “What would it be like to become a journalist?”

C&B: Can you share a moment or feedback that confirmed to you that the project has impact and relevance?
Dana Tudor: Yes, for Chic-Elite we often received feedback that our interviews made people evaluate or become aware of important things for them.

C&B: What do you think differentiates your business or your professional approach from the rest of the industry?
Dana Tudor: If we refer to the Buticul de Inspirăție agency, the approach to communication from a complex perspective – as a communication specialist, journalist and coach. Our clients get 3 in 1 :). We have some of the best people in the industry on our team, in their segment. We are fast, efficient, very good and very serious.

C&B: What does a typical day look like for you now and what moments of the day bring you the most satisfaction?
Dana Tudor: Some days are for documentation and work in the office, others are in the field, in meetings with clients or at events. The constant (which also comes with the moments of greatest satisfaction) are the interactions with clients, the coaching sessions, the discussions with my daughter, the sports classes and the amusement provided by the antics that the little animals in our yard do, including those that come to visit (hedgehogs, frogs).

C&B: What values ​​or principles guide you in what you do and how do you apply them every day?

Dana Tudor: Thank you for giving me the opportunity to review a values ​​identification report, made by Dan Dițoiu, an exceptional psychotherapist, who works very documented and scientifically, founder of Psycenter. My values ​​are Relevance, Development, Efficiency, Success and Safety. If I feel like I’m not developing, I panic, I’m a “target woman”, as a collaborator once defined me, I look for solutions to achieve maximum results in the most efficient way, and probably due to the thousands of news and articles written and rewritten, it has become second nature to ask myself how relevant a certain information is to one audience or another. That’s why I allowed myself to make a few references in this interview, for those who would like to learn new things, discovering the mentioned experts.

C&B: How was Chic Elite born and what motivated you to launch this project?

Dana Tudor: Before the launch, Chic-Elite was like a baby that cried every day because it wanted to say something to the world. That’s how I gave it a voice, a platform. I’m privileged to meet special people , often modest, who through their passion leave their mark on the world in a way that inspires me so much that I want to hear about them, through the interviews I conduct. I believe that when we have a goal, a disappointment, a bad time, a real story about courage and determination can become a landmark. I believe that landmarks are essential, especially since we are increasingly surrounded by forms without substance, as I discussed in a recent video interview with Ana Maria Ștefănescu.

The interview with Dana Tudor shows us how passion, courage, and perseverance can transform a career into a source of inspiration for others.