CRISTINA BADEA

I believe people are capable of incredible things if they have the proper drive and the support they need. I am at my best when I get to initialise and organise teams and projects, offer guidance and help build structures in order to monetise creativity and innovation. This is who I am.

I started my career 10 years ago as a research analyst for TV in Bucharest, Romania. After doing this for a couple of years I moved on to be a media executive at the UK headquarters of Reckitt Benckiser, a multinational FMCG company.

Much as I enjoyed the corporate world and the international working environment, I decided to return to Romania and take on the position of research director at Media Pro (which was to become part of the CME group, one the largest Eastern European media companies).

While coordinating the research activities of the company I got close to the world of TV, cinema and new media production. I was granted access to all sides of the business, dealing with various tasks from market analysis to movie production, benchmarking and process optimization, business development and consumer tests.

Once the company was completely taken over by CME in 2009 (becoming Media Pro Entertainment) I moved to the position of Head of Content Development Research, coordinating the teams in six Eastern European countries. This job brought me even closer to the production realm, this time allowing me to benefit from the shared know-how of people coming from different cultures. Together with my team I played an active role in project development and design, following projects all the way up to the B2C marketing phase. Additional to the various TV series and reality & entertainment shows that I worked for, I was also involved in designing the content development and cross-platform strategies, bringing in my knowledge of the entertainment market and consumer trends.

In 2012 I took on the position of Managing Director for Adenium Film, an independent production company that I founded together with a group of creatives and innovators. We started to develop, finance and produce our own projects and we focus on creating transmedia properties. Our first short film (Scent Collection by Igor Cobileanski) was recently selected for the Short Film Corner at the Cannes Film Festival.

2013 brought along further developments in my professional life. I was accepted onto the European Producers Workshop at EAVE and I started working with Media Pro Entertainment again, this time as a creative producer for two feature films, and project manager for transmedia content.