About
The people behind the initiative.
RISE Hub is led by a small, dedicated team of co-founders working from the UK under the patronage of the Repatriot association. Our work is possible because of the broader coalition of founders, investors, institutional partners, and advisors who have placed this cause on the public agenda. We represent them, not substitute them.
The team
Raluca Epureanu
Stakeholder Affairs
Raluca brings nearly two decades of senior leadership in international hospitality, with roles across thirty countries and four continents, including regional responsibility for one of the world’s largest hotel groups. An Oxford EMBA graduate (Saïd Business School, with distinction). As a co-founder of RISE, she leads stakeholder engagement and public affairs, drawing on a long track record of coalition-building and senior-level institutional dialogue across cultures.
Diana Olar
Innovation & Intelligence
Diana is a former founder turned operator with more than fifteen years across technology, media, and digital advertising. After a first venture and several scaling roles, she now leads global commercial partner programmes at one of the world’s largest technology platforms. She has served on the board of Innovation Labs Romania since 2012, mentors founders across CEE accelerators, and is an active angel investor. As a co-founder of RISE, she leads market and ecosystem intelligence, drawing on her operator and investor lens to inform the initiative’s evidence and decisions.
Diana Spiridon
Ecosystem & Partnerships
Diana brings over two decades of experience in innovation, spanning banking, telecommunications, digital entertainment, and clean energy. She has led innovation departments inside major UK corporates and currently advises ventures and startups as an independent consultant, including as a long-standing Innovate UK mentor. UCLA Anderson MBA, with further training in design thinking at Stanford. As a co-founder of RISE, she leads the policy research and evidence-building work, drawing on her career-long focus on product–market fit, business-model design, and the practical mechanics of scaling early ideas into deployed solutions.
Sebastian Boncu
Policy Strategy
Sebastian is a Romanian founder based in the UK, building an applied AI venture in geospatial intelligence. Recognised in the Top 100 Romanians Worldwide for entrepreneurship in 2024 and a finalist at the Great British Entrepreneur Awards the same year, he mentors deep-tech founders at the University of Warwick’s Deep Tech Innovation Centre and serves on the innovation board of the WMG startup studio. As a co-founder of RISE, he leads the coalition-building effort, institutional dialogue, and the legislative strategy with the Ministry of Finance.
The broader context
RISE Hub does not act alone. The legislative proposal is supported by an independent technical advisory structure of tax and public policy experts, by institutional partners from the Romanian innovation ecosystem, and by a coalition of founders, investors, and organisations that have publicly declared their support.
The credibility of the initiative before the Ministry of Finance and the Senate derives from the quality of this coalition. Each voice matters, particularly at the current stage of evidence-building and institutional consultation.
Join the coalition