Adina China-Birta & Anfold: From Top Management to designing emotional balance in business

Adina China-Birta, Founder of Anfold, shares her journey from business to psychology, conscious leadership, and how performance can coexist with emotional balance.

Adina China-Birta is a psychologist and the founder of Anfold, a space dedicated to emotional health, personal development, and conscious leadership. After a solid career of over 20 years in finance and business, where she held top management positions and led complex teams, Adina chose a deeply intentional professional reconversion: a shift from financial performance to human performance. The experience she gained in the corporate environment — the pressure of decision-making, the responsibility of leadership, and the impact of chronic stress — became the foundation of her approach as a psychologist. At Anfold, Adina works with entrepreneurs, leaders, and professionals in high-demand environments, supporting them in processes of self-awareness, emotional regulation, and rebuilding balance between personal and professional life.

Her vision combines the strategic rigor of the business environment with the empathy and depth of psychology, promoting a model of healthy, authentic, and sustainable leadership. Through Anfold, Adina China-Birta builds bridges between results and meaning, between external success and inner clarity.

C&B: If we were to look at a narrative thread of your career, what were the key moments that defined you?

Adina China-Birta: Looking back, the narrative thread of my career is not about roles or titles, but about the moments when I needed to realign with myself. A first defining moment was entering the financial sector, an extremely competitive industry that taught me discipline, decision-making rigor, and the responsibility of leadership. It was a period of intense building, centered around performance and results, around which I built my professional identity. Another key moment was taking on top management positions: from the outside, it was the “peak” of my career; from the inside, it was my first serious confrontation with the limits of this model of success. The constant pressure, fast pace, and need to always be available began to raise uncomfortable questions about the personal costs of performance. The turning point was the decision to study psychology. It was not a break from the past, but a natural continuation: the desire to understand people beyond KPIs, to work with motivation, emotions, and meaning. This transition completely redefined how I relate to work, success, and impact. Founding Anfold is perhaps the synthesis of all these stages. It is the place where my business experience meets psychology, and where my work becomes one of integration: performance without self-exhaustion and a career that is not built at the expense of health.

C&B: What was the biggest challenge in turning the Anfold concept into a functional and impactful center?

Adina China-Birta: A major challenge was building Anfold by taking what is valuable from the corporate environment, such as clear processes, while maintaining enough flexibility to respect the human, emotional rhythm of the people who enter this space. Another major challenge was aligning the team around a shared vision, in a field where each professional comes with their own style, values, and clinical practice. Anfold is not just a place where psychological services are offered, but a framework that requires coherence, ethics, and a culture of real collaboration — and building this culture required time, dialogue, and a great deal of clarity. Perhaps the most difficult challenge was assuming visibility, having a public voice in a field that was new to me, psychology, given that people associated me with the financial industry.

C&B: Is there a dream or ambition that has always guided you, regardless of obstacles?

Adina China-Birta: I don’t think I’ve had a single dream or vision that guided me throughout my entire professional journey; rather, my visions evolved with age and with the professional and personal stage I was in. I think it’s beautiful to have such a constant vision, but I didn’t.

C&B: What did you look like at the beginning of your journey, and how do you feel you’ve transformed up to now?

Adina China-Birta: If at its launch in 2025 Anfold was like a newborn that needed to be “fed” by its parents, now the child is one year old, has started to walk, and has become curious and interactive. I am extremely eager and curious about its future evolution.

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

Adina China-Birta: I think they would say I am demanding, but people-oriented. That I care about the quality of the work, but also about ethics and meaning. I believe they would also say that I offer space, not control. They would probably add that I am consistent: the values I talk about — respect, healthy boundaries, authenticity, humor — are also reflected in how I build professional relationships.

C&B: In what way has your professional experience influenced the most important decision in developing this project?

Adina China-Birta: I think that, for the Anfold project, the most important decision was choosing who to start this journey with. Dana Zeicu, my partner, is a highly experienced psychologist and also has extensive experience in business, through multiple strategic HR consulting projects in the Middle East, Africa, and Asia, as well as through Chief People Officer roles at both national and international levels. I have seen both in my experience as a banker and top manager, and in my personal life, how important the choice of partners is, how risky a poor choice can be, and how many advantages a well-made choice brings.

C&B: How would you define, in a few words, the Anfold philosophy: a “safe zone” where mind, emotions, and body are harmonized?

Adina China-Birta: For me, the Anfold philosophy means a space of real psychological safety, where a person does not have to perform, prove, or defend themselves. Only when our nervous system feels safe can we authentically access emotions, thoughts, and inner resources. The harmonization of mind, emotions, and body means moving out of fragmentation — from living only in analysis, only in reaction, or only in survival — and returning to a form of integration. At Anfold, we work with this integration: cognitive clarity, emotional regulation, and bodily awareness, so that change is not just intellectual, but lived and stable. Integration also refers to our multiple roles: partners, parents, children, employees, managers, artists, friends — so that we can make space for each of these roles in our lives.

C&B: What do you think differentiates your business or professional approach from the rest of the industry?

Adina China-Birta: Of course, there are many things that differentiate us, but also many things we have in common. Among the common elements, I would like to believe we share the lived values of the profession, peer consultations, and intra- and interdisciplinary collaboration. Anfold is not just an office or a service center, but a space built on clear values: safety, ethics, collaboration, and professional responsibility. We are interested in long-term impact, not quick fixes. We also have a strong interest in integrating technology into psychotherapy, such as using virtual reality to treat phobias or to teach clients relaxation techniques. As a personal differentiator, it would be the fact that I come from a professional background in business and top management, and this experience gives me a direct understanding of the real pressures in entrepreneurial and corporate environments — fast pace, financial responsibility, difficult decisions, constant exposure. I don’t speak about these from theory, but from lived experience. That allows me to better understand clients coming from such environments.

C&B: What does a typical day look like for you now, and which moments bring you the greatest satisfaction?

Adina China-Birta: One of the major changes in my new career is that I no longer have days that look the same. I have days when I see clients in the morning, and others when this happens at noon or in the evening, while the rest of the time is dedicated to growing Anfold. I make space in my schedule, even if not always as often as I would like, for sports, going to the theater, or attending concerts.

C&B: What impact have you most often observed in clients’ lives — whether in individual therapy, couples therapy, or company programs?

Adina China-Birta: The situations clients are in when they seek help are very diverse, which means the impact of what we do is also varied. However, there are a few common outcomes of therapy, such as developing assertiveness, increasing awareness of emotions and bodily sensations, and improving the ability to identify cognitive distortions — all of which translate into better relationships with others and with oneself. At the same time, we must acknowledge that we do not have a magic wand, and that each person evolves at their own pace, faster or slower, and that is perfectly okay.

C&B: How did Anfold come to life, and what motivated you to build a psychology center that integrates both classical therapy and modern technologies?

Adina China-Birta: Anfold emerged from a need I experienced personally and often observed around me: high-performing, responsible people who appear “in control” but are disconnected from their own emotions and internally exhausted. In the business environment, psychological health is most often approached reactively, when a crisis arises. I wanted to create a space that normalizes prevention, self-regulation, and conscious development, not just intervention at moments of blockage. The integration of classical therapy with modern technologies came naturally. I believe in the rigor of scientifically validated methods and in authentic therapeutic relationships, but I equally believe that technology can increase accessibility, continuity, and efficiency of intervention. Anfold was thus born at the intersection of tradition and innovation, out of respect for the classical foundations of psychology and psychotherapy, but also with openness to modern solutions that make emotional health more accessible, more integrated, and better adapted to today’s pace of life.

C&B: How do you integrate traditional psychotherapy approaches with innovative tools so that the process remains personalized and effective for the client?

Adina China-Birta: Integration begins with a very clear principle: the therapeutic relationship, the alliance between client and therapist in achieving the client’s goals, remains the core of the intervention. No matter how innovative a tool is, it does not replace the clinical framework, proper case conceptualization, and the personalized process built together with the client. At Anfold, we work with validated approaches such as CBT, integrative methods, and interventions focused on emotional regulation and bodily awareness, while technology — in our case, virtual reality (VR) — is a complementary tool, not a substitute for classical therapy. We primarily use VR in interventions involving controlled exposure, anxiety management, or working with certain phobias. The advantage is that we can create a safe, predictable, and gradual environment where clients can activate and regulate their emotional responses in a much more structured way than through imagination or direct real-life exposure. Personalization remains essential, meaning that VR is not applied as a standard, but only when case analysis indicates that technology can accelerate or support the process. The pace of exposure, intensity of stimuli, and integration of the experience are calibrated according to each client’s emotional profile and objectives. Essentially, technology helps us be more precise and efficient, but real change happens through integrating the experience — cognitively, emotionally, and physically — within the therapeutic relationship. VR is a catalyst, not the center of the process.

C&B: What plans do you have for Anfold — expanding services, new technologies, collaborations, or educational projects?

Adina China-Birta: Plans for Anfold are built around the idea of sustainable growth, not rapid expansion. I want development to remain aligned with our values and with our real capacity to maintain the quality of our professional work. In the medium term, we aim to expand services in prevention and psychoeducation through programs dedicated to burnout, stress regulation, and conscious leadership, addressing both individuals and organizations, to support early intervention in practice, not just working with established symptoms. Regarding technology, we will continue developing the use of virtual reality (VR) in interventions for anxiety and stress, maintaining a rigorous framework with constant evaluation of effectiveness. Another important pillar is the educational area. We want Anfold to become a space for professional training and dialogue through workshops, thematic groups, and possibly even academic partnerships, because the development of emotional health requires community, not just individual interventions. In the long term, I see Anfold as a center that combines clinical practice, education, and innovation, built around the idea that performance and balance do not exclude each other, but support one another.

Adina China-Birta’s story is one of courage. The courage to redefine success and build a professional path aligned with personal values. Through Anfold, she brings together the rigor of business and the depth of psychology, creating a space where performance no longer comes at the cost of burnout, but becomes sustainable and authentic.