Ioana Duca: “If I’ll ever candidate for CD, it will be for Financial Director”

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 3rd 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