About
Ascensi Management is an advisory and executive search firm based in Bucharest and founded in 2016, working with CEOs in Romania and the European Union. Its three practices are Executive Search, Organization & Talent and Leadership Development, and its CEO is Valentino Virsescu.
What we do
Ascensi Management works with CEOs, CFOs, COOs and managing directors on the decisions that turn on people: who to put into a senior role, who is ready to be promoted, where value sits in the organization, and what the gaps are costing.
Our clients are companies at scale in Romania and across the European Union. Candidates come to us through a different door: Open roles, and Career Counseling for professionals weighing a move.
The skills gap in Romania
76%
of companies in Romania name the skills gap as the main barrier to their transformation, against 63% globally.
Source: KPMG România, People first (People Services newsletter), drawing on the WEF Future of Jobs Report 2025 · Jan 2025
CEO confidence in revenue growth
30%
of CEOs are very or extremely confident about revenue growth over the next 12 months, down from 38% in the previous year's survey and a recent peak of 56% in 2022.
Source: PwC, 29th Global CEO Survey · 19 Jan 2026
The firm's work has been recognized three times: Most Trusted Coaching & Recruitment Consultancy, at the Corporate Vision Awards Romania in 2020; Recruitment Consultancy Service of the Year, at the Romania Prestige Awards for 2020/21; and Best Recruitment Consultancy Romania, at the Wealth & Finance International Management Consulting Awards in 2023.
Others sell one instrument. We join them into one diagnosis.
Most firms own one way of looking at a company and sell it as a project: a search, a survey, an assessment. Each answers its own question well, and the answers do not add up. What changes a board's mind is the join between them — what an open role is worth, set against who is in it; what a company says about itself, set against where the work actually crosses between teams. And because the firm that measures a role is the firm that fills it, the brief a search runs against is a measured one rather than a wish list.
Six lenses, one reading
We read the same organization through six lenses: Role-to-Value Alignment, where value sits; Talent Mapping, skill and willingness; Talent Assessment, readiness and values; Ownership, who owns each handoff; what people say; and how others see them. The value is not in any one of them. It is in what happens when they disagree.
What we will not claim
Four things we will not do, so that a reading from us can be acted on and a figure of ours can be quoted.
- We do not claim a cause. A finding says what the data shows, never what produced it. A causal claim needs a controlled before-and-after; where we do not have one, we do not make one.
- We do not read thin evidence. Below the point where there are enough responses for a reading to be sound, we withhold it rather than dress it up — and we say that we have withheld it.
- We do not invent a figure. Where a number is not defined, we say so instead of calculating a second version of it. A missing input stays missing rather than appearing as a zero.
- We do not promise a percentage. Nobody can tell you in advance what your turnover will fall by, and we will not put a number on it to win the work. The numbers in a recommendation are your own, each with its source beside it.
Who does the work
At Ascensi, we hold ourselves accountable, and the colleague who has ownership of delivery signs every recommendation this firm delivers. Every recommendation carries an owner and the cost of waiting, and the quality of the data behind a finding is stated beside the finding. One consultant is answerable for a whole mandate, so a client always has one person to argue with.
What we publish, and how to check it
We publish our research as Insights — articles, studies and case studies — so that the figures in it can be checked and quoted. Every figure carries its source and, where the source gives one, the date it was taken. Our own figures and the data behind them are published under CC BY 4.0, so anyone may reuse one with credit to Ascensi Management and a link back; a figure from another publisher is shown under its source's terms. No client is ever named: a case describes the sector, the size band and the market. The full standard is set out in Editorial standards.
Who you reach
Who you reach
Press and client inquiries go to Evelina Dorobantu, Specialist, at press@ascensi.ro.
A journalist who asks which source sits behind a published figure is sent the source itself. Candidates write to candidat@ascensi.ro.
Stay informed
People
Valentino Virsescu
Founder & CEO
Valentino founded Ascensi Management and leads the firm as CEO. He works with CEOs and boards across the firm's three practices — Executive Search, Organization & Talent and Leadership Development — on the idea the firm was built around: others sell one instrument, we join them into one diagnosis. He holds the firm to the standard it publishes under, where every figure in an article, a study or a case study carries its source and its date.
Liviu Saizescu
Chief Operations Officer
Liviu is a trainer, a life coach and a counselor in personal and vocational development, with 18 years of experience. He is also a clinical psychologist registered with the "Colegiul Psihologilor din România", and his integrative approach combines psychology, coaching and counseling across five levels — physical, emotional, mental, social and spiritual — and covers self-confidence, communication and relationships, career direction, periods of change, and the balance between professional and personal life. At Ascensi his work spans Organization & Talent and Leadership Development, including Talent Assessment and Leadership workshops, alongside Headhunting and Recruitment.
Evelina Dorobantu
Specialist
Evelina is the first point of contact for journalists and for companies approaching Ascensi, and puts each question to the practice that can answer it.