PRIVATE CALL · MONDAY, AUGUST 31, 2026
How much has it cost you to build without a network?
Every serious diaspora in the world has one. Romania does not. Yet.
No cost. No pitch. Nobody will ask you for anything on this call.
THE SESSION
The Global Romania Business Network
A working session on who we are building with, how the network actually operates, and what the next six years commit us to.
WHO YOU WILL HEAR FROM
Three people, sixty minutes, no slides you have seen before.
Mihai Lehene
Founder, Romanian United Foundation
Mihai founded RUF in 2018 and wrote the convergence strategy this network is built on. He has spent the last six years proving stage one: over 200 funded projects, 100,000 donors, and an organization present in 300 cities. He will walk you through the ten-million-dollar, six-year commitment and why it starts with people rather than platforms.
Diana Dram
Lead, Global Romania Business Network
Diana leads the Business Network, the layer of the strategy that connects Romanian entrepreneurs, executives and investors worldwide. She will cover the target member profile, the operating principles, and the near-term priorities the network is being built around.
Cristian Puscas
Global Romania Business Network
Cristian works on the Business Network build-out and on the Tech and Innovation Summit outreach. He will cover how participants can contribute through expertise, capital, relationships and introductions.
Bios are short on purpose. You will get the long version in the room.
YOU ALREADY KNOW THIS PART
You have been doing this alone.
Maybe you needed a lawyer in Bucharest last year and ended up asking an American colleague, because you did not know a single Romanian one you would trust with it.
Maybe you raised a round and every check came from people who have no idea where you grew up.
Maybe you have wanted to put something back for a decade, and the only thing anyone has ever offered you is a gala ticket and a donation form.
Or maybe it is not one thing at all. Maybe you know forty successful Romanians, and not one of them knows the other thirty-nine.
WHY NOTHING HAPPENED
So you stopped showing up. That was a reasonable decision.
Most of us made the same call. You went to a couple of community events, you found a folk dance and a raffle, you were asked for a donation before anyone asked what you do, and you concluded that this was not where your professional life was going to happen. So you built your career in rooms where nobody could pronounce your last name, and you got very good at it.
Nobody is going to argue with that. It was rational. But the situation does not improve through absence. The talent stays scattered, the introductions never get made, the capital never finds the founder, and every year the second generation drifts a little further from the thing their parents carried across an ocean.
THE ACTUAL PROBLEM
It was never that Romanians abroad do not care.
It is easy to assume the problem is indifference, or ego, or the old joke about what happens when you put three Romanians in a room. It is none of those. The Irish, the Jewish and the Indian diasporas are not more patriotic than we are. They are better organized. Somebody built the institution, funded it, staffed it, and ran it for forty years while everyone else got on with their lives.
Nobody has ever done that for Romania. That is the whole gap. Not sentiment. Infrastructure.
Once you stop reacting to the symptoms and name the root cause, you can finally see your options.
THE HOUR ITSELF
The Global Romania Business Network
This is not
a fundraiser, a membership sale, or a webinar with a slide deck and a payment link at the end. Nobody will ask you for money, for a commitment, or for a decision.
This is
an hour in which we show you exactly what we are building, who we are building it with, and what the next six years look like, so you can decide for yourself whether it belongs on your radar.
Give us sixty minutes. We will give you the whole picture and a room full of your counterparts around the world.
WRITE THIS ON A POST-IT AND PUT IT ON YOUR SCREEN
Build one of the most powerful and important business networks in the world.
Mihai Lehene, Founder, Romanian United Foundation
WHERE THIS SITS
A thirty-year plan. We are at the start of stage two.
Romanian United Foundation runs on one thesis: Romania can be one of the great country-development stories of the twenty-first century. We treat that as a thirty-year engineering problem with a roadmap to match. We measure Romania's global relevance across seven independent criteria. Today the country ranks around 75th out of 193. The goal is top 25 by 2050.
Phase 1
BUILD TRUST
2020 - 2025
$0 Million
Complete
200+ projects funded, 100,000+ donors, global presence established
WE ARE HERE
Phase 2
BUILD THE NETWORK
2026 - 2032
$0 Million
In progress
$100M+ economic impact, 1,000+ projects, a working global network
Phase 3
CREATE IMPACT
2033 - 2050
$0 Million
Ahead
$5 billion in foreign direct investment, $50 billion in economic value
Stage one is done. The trust is earned. We are now spending six years and ten million dollars to build the network.
WHAT WE ARE BUILDING NOW
Stage two has three layers. They only work together.
1. The Structured Network
The physical and human layer. Chapters, ambassadors and partner organizations, city by city.
- Formal country chapters with professional staff, starting in the largest diaspora markets
- Academia, corporate, medical, community and international sub-networks
- Ambassadors in the cities where there is no chapter yet
- Romanian United Foundation is already present in 300 cities
2. The Digital Nation
The operating system. Not a social network, an infrastructure layer for a diaspora nobody has ever counted properly.
- A member platform, a business directory and an experts directory
- The Romanian Diaspora Census, because current estimates range from 4 million to 12 million
- News and events aggregation across the whole community
- AI-assisted diaspora intelligence
3. The Business Network
Your layer. Senior Romanian and Romania-connected business leaders, connected on purpose rather than by chance.
- An annual economic forum for the top Romanian-origin business leaders in the world
- A permanent network of vetted senior professionals across every major market
- Curated introductions, executive roundtables, cross-border deal flow
- Romania has six billionaires on the 2026 Forbes list and they have never been systematically organized
THE INSTITUTION BEHIND THIS
Romanian United Foundation
Since 2018, Romanian United Foundation has connected Romanians worldwide across education, healthcare, philanthropy, culture, innovation, entrepreneurship and civic engagement. We are an institution builder. We do not run one program and call it a movement, and we do not launch things we are not prepared to fund for a decade.
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FOUNDED
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CITIES
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DONORS
$0M+
RAISED
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PARTNER ORGANIZATIONS
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CHARITY NAVIGATOR ACCOUNTABILITY
Figures as of March 2026.
THE FOUR THINGS WE LOOK FOR
We are looking for a specific kind of person. You will know within four lines.
The people we want are not a demographic. They are four traits, and the first three are not negotiable.
You carry Romania.
You have it in your heart, whether you left at six or at thirty-six, whether your Romanian is fluent or embarrassing. It has never stopped being part of how you see yourself.
You build for something beyond yourself.
You are past the stage where the next win is the point. You want the work to mean something and to outlast you, and you have started thinking in terms of what you leave behind.
You hold a high standard of excellence.
You have no patience for well-intentioned amateurism. If a thing is going to exist, you would rather it be world class or not exist at all.
You can put one of three things on the table.
Capital, expertise, or connections. Any one of the three is enough. You are the most important thing you bring, but each person needs to bring at least one of those three.
If you read those four and recognized yourself, this call is for you. If you did not, we would rather you spend Monday morning on something else.
THE AGENDA
Sixty minutes, four blocks.
Welcome and introductions
Quick introductions around the room and the framing of the call. By the end of this block you will know who else is in the room, which matters more than the agenda does.
The Business Network strategy
The vision, the target member profile, the operating principles, and the near-term priorities. Including, specifically, how participants can contribute through expertise, capital, relationships and strategic introductions. By the end of this block you will be able to explain the network to someone else in your own words, and say whether it is something you want near you.
The Summits
A short briefing on the Romanian Community Summit and the Tech and Innovation Summit, taking place in Chicago on September 18 to 20, 2026, as the nearest opportunity to activate this network in person. By the end of this block you will know whether you want to be in Chicago in three weeks.
Questions and next steps
Open discussion, the questions that actually matter to you, and immediate follow-up actions. By the end of this block you will have a clear answer on what, if anything, happens next.
Intended outcome: you leave with a clear understanding of where the Business Network is heading, the role of the Summits, and the specific ways you might strengthen it.
THREE WEEKS AFTER THIS CALL
Chicago, September 18 to 20, 2026
The Romanian Community Summit is the one moment each year when this whole network stops being a diagram and becomes a room. This year it runs alongside the Tech and Innovation Summit, hosted with the Romanian American Chamber of Commerce IT Alliance. Three days, one city, and the counterparts you have never met.
BEFORE YOU DECIDE
Questions we would be asking.
MONDAY, AUGUST 31, 2026
Honest to God, we do not want anything from you.
We simply want to put this on your radar.
Say yes to sixty minutes and the whole picture.
Say yes to meeting your counterparts around the world.
Say yes to being in the room while this is still being built.
We are building one of the most powerful business networks in the world. We are giving it six years and ten million dollars. You should at least know it exists.
Monday, August 31, 2026
11:00 AM Chicago · 7:00 PM Bucharest · 6:00 PM London
60 minutes · Zoom · No cost
Romanian Community Summit · September 18 to 20, 2026 · Chicago
A Romanian United Foundation initiative · summit@globalromania.org