Ramona Bâliș, CFO of Metaminds: behind innovation there must be rigour

Ramona Bâliș, Chief Financial Officer and board member at Metaminds, has spent more than two decades in financial leadership across IT, telecom, energy, automotive and industrial manufacturing. In this interview she makes the case that, in a technology company, rigour and vision have to advance together.

In a business whose promise is “Engineering Tomorrow,” she says, finance is not a brake but a compass: forward-looking choices that favour long-term results over instant returns, and investment in solid technology, people and partnerships even when the payoff isn’t immediate.

Her model of the modern CFO is a business partner, not a custodian of numbers — someone who builds decisions on scenarios and real-time data, protects the company’s strategic capital, and can tell genuine progress from mere activity. Her three working principles: clarity, trust and collaboration.

Bâliș is direct about women in finance: leadership, she argues, has no gender, and empathy, patience and emotional intelligence can be strengths rather than liabilities. Financial leadership, still male-dominated, needs stakeholders who judge competence and vision over stereotype.

She closes with advice for young professionals — seek mentors who both guide and challenge you, don’t fear feedback, and treat the appetite to keep learning as your most durable advantage. Real growth, she notes, rarely happens inside a comfort zone.