Vlad is a Romanian patient advocate and health policy expert with extensive experience in advocacy, non-profits, business and policy-making. He is the former Romanian Minister of Health. Before that, he pursued a career in finance, first in the financial sector where he last served as Vice President of the infrastructure division of the leading banking group in CEE and later on as the Romanian Finance Minister’s Chief of Staff. Since 2008 he is involved in patient advocacy, both at national and European level. He is the founder of an international network of volunteers that helped over 2.500 cancer patients back in 2008-2012 to receive essential medicines that were missing in Romania. He later on founded MagiCAMP, a project that started with a camp for children diagnosed with oncological diseases in Romania and Moldova and developed into one of the most successful non-profit organisations in the region offering support to children with serious conditions and their families. For MagiCAMP, Vlad has received in 2019 the European Parliament’s “Citizen of the year Award”.

His main interests are:  projects that increase access to essential healthcare services, politics, policy-making, advocacy and peer learning.