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Anca has been at Ophelos just over one year, quickly making herself indispensable to our organisation and it’s success - especially as we hit our biggest challenge yet, rolling out across Europe. Here are some of the questions we shared with Anca as part of our IWD X Ophelos spotlight series.
What do you like most about your job?
There are a few things that I love about my role - a lot stemming from the variety that it involves. The variety means that I get to work on many different problems using different skill sets, or ‘hats’ such as working with people across the company, improving processes, and analytical thinking.
I really enjoy working so closely with the CEO and CCO, we look at lots of different areas of the business - at the moment there is of focus on scaling strategies and supporting integration efforts.
The other key thing that I love is the pace of being at a growing startup - there are so many opportunities for change, innovation, and being creative. Our recent acquisition by Intrum has really accelerated our growth path as we roll out our products Europe wide - it’s very exciting.
How did you get to where you are now career-wise?
I started out in investment banking working both in London and Dubai - it’s a really interesting industry and set me up with many of the transferable skills that I use now. Following this I jumped into Venture Capital where I started to become really interested in operational roles at startups.
After cutting my teeth in another fintech, I joined Ophelos in February 2023 as a Business Operations and Strategy Lead. After only 3 months we actually started our acquisition journey, which I’ve been heavily supporting on alongside CEO and CCO. My contributions were quickly recognised and I was promoted to Chief of Staff in the September which expanded my ownership and level of responsibility.
What are the most difficult things about your job?
I would have to say context switching - the tricky part of having a job with so much variety. I’m often moving between high level strategic work and detailed problem solving for different teams at a really fast pace which can be challenging. It’s often difficult to manage my time fairly, based on where I can have the greatest impact whilst addressing everyone’s issues. It’s exciting to develop my skills in this area though.
What would your advice be to women trying to get into the start up world?
Trust in the skills that you have already developed - so many are super valuable and transferable in a start up environment but so often underestimated. Being confident in your ability, taking that leap of faith and saying yes to new challenges will take you far!
I think that should always be combined with care, interest, and common sense as it can really deliver so much value to both your career and the company you work (or want to work) at.
What do you like to do when you’re out of work?
The thing that I do most outside of work is definitely exercise. I love spending time doing sports in and outside of the gym. Most recently, I've picked up Muay Thai, which has been a lot of fun. I've been doing that for about a year, and it’s quite an interesting new challenge. It's a very high focus sport. And even more recently, I also picked up reformer Pilates, which is almost at the opposite end, of the spectrum, but also a lot of fun and a good challenge.
