Trust and Psychological Safety
The whole Upskilling project was born from a mission and a vision: bridging the gap between senior leadership’s bird’s-eye view and the realities in the field, realities that, for many reasons, often remain visible only at individual contributor level.
In today’s BANI world, you cannot expect to successfully approach challenges or draft meaningful strategies when you are seeing only fragments of the bigger picture.
In our last meeting, we took a significant step toward closing that gap by bringing forward a panel of individual contributors. This time, we are shifting our focus to middle leadership, a group that is often considered either the cause of, or the solution to, the disconnect I mentioned earlier.
And for our Summer Closing Event, we have chosen a topic that is anything but easy: Trust and Psychological Safety—the Holy Grail of high-performing teams, if we are to believe the findings of Google's Project Aristotle.
We often think Trust and Psychological safety as one of the most organizational culture linked traits. And it is, of course. It has a lot to do with top down approaches. A lot, but not all. Many times the trust and psychological safety in the room is broken by the lack of clarity by the lack of direct feedback, by the lack of beneficial conflict. And that sometimes does not have to do with corporate rules. It has sometimes, not in all cases to do with our desire to be nice, not to upset people, or to be invulnerable.
Join us for another authentic event where we are equal and contribute alike - speakers, moderator, and audience - better together.
Agenda
Welcome & Context
Open Talk with:
Laura Preda — Operational Efficiency & Transversal Transformation Manager @Orange Services Romania
Alin Calița - Director of Engineering@Axway Romania
Ștefania Budulan — AI Technology Lead@Adobe Romania
Moderated by Anne Dumitrache
The Upskilling Journey - The Past, The Present and The Future - Anne Dumitrache & Upskilling Community
Networking Session
Speaker Bios:
Laura Preda - As Operational Efficiency and Transformation Manager at Orange Services, I work at the intersection of people, transformation, and business strategy, guiding teams through meaningful change and helping them create ways of working that are both effective and human‑centered. During my 10 years with Orange Services, I have developed a deep understanding of the organization’s culture, operations and strategic priorities, enabling me to drive transformation initiatives that create lasting impact. My focus has always been on driving organizational transformation and building environments where individuals feel safe to contribute, challenge ideas, and grow with confidence. I’m driven by the belief that trust is the foundation of any successful collaboration, and I strive to cultivate it through empathy, clarity, and genuine connection. What energizes me most is seeing people unlock their potential and watching teams evolve into communities that support, inspire, and elevate one another. I’m deeply motivated by the conviction that meaningful change starts with people, and this shapes my commitment to empowering teams, fostering innovation, and building strong, authentic connections across the organization. Adaptability is one of my defining strengths, and I bring this mindset into everything I do, staying flexible, curious, focused, and solution‑oriented even when navigating uncertainty or rapid change
Alin Calița - is Director of Engineering at Axway, where he leads strategic initiatives in the Managed File Transfer (MFT) domain and plays a key role in the architectural evolution and delivery of enterprise products. With extensive experience at the intersection of leadership and technical execution, Alin drives large-scale transformation and modernization programs while accelerating the adoption of AI-powered solutions across software development processes. He is recognized for his ability to align strategic vision with pragmatic execution, fostering collaboration across global engineering, product, and leadership teams. Through an impact-driven leadership style, Alin creates environments where teams deliver predictably, make informed decisions, and innovate in a sustainable way. At the same time, he maintains a high level of technical involvement, contributing to the resolution of complex challenges and the refinement of architectural direction. This enables him to stay closely connected to operational realities while leading by example.
Ștefania Budulan - has over 10 years of experience delivering Machine Learning and AI solutions that connect research (academia and industry) with real-world business impact. She works at the intersection of data, engineering, and strategic decision-making, building production-ready systems and advising organizations across financial services, telecom, media, marketing, IoT, manufacturing, etc. AI systems built: recommender systems, anomaly detection, churn prediction, next-best offer (NBO), risk prediction, chatbots (w/o LLMs, 2017+), and various NLP solutions
Anne Dumitrache is an experienced trainer, organizational, cognitive-behavioral, and clinical psychologist, as well as an internationally certified coach. With 18 years in the IT industry — from developer to program manager for Fortune 500 companies — and more than 14 years in leadership, she brings deep expertise in people management and organizational growth