If you had said to Flavia Popescu 14 years ago when she arrived in the UK aged 18 from Romania – speaking no English and with very little money – that in 2024, she would be leading some of the country’s critical defence and space projects, it would have been just a dream.
Her meteoric rise has been nothing short of remarkable, capped off in October at the SOE’s Safety and Resilience in Engineering Awards 2024, when she was awarded the Future Leader award and the prestigious Helix award. The latter was awarded for her excellence in engineering, and for displaying resilience, ethical leadership, future vision and impact beyond her organisation.
“I am very proud to win the awards, but I also feel a bit guilty as there were so many talented people in the room,” says Popescu (FAPM CMgr FCMI EngTech), a chartered senior project controls manager at Babcock International Group. “When I look back, I have done a lot of things to reach this point that people do not see, and I have done it in a very short space of time.”
Born in Transylvania, she is the youngest woman in the UK to become the first four-time Fellow in Leadership, Project Management, Research & Development, and Invention, obtaining her first aged 30 and the last at 32.
Popescu gained her technical engineering qualification in just three months, much less than the two years she was told was needed, while her four fellowships were all completed much sooner than her assessors imagined.
JOURNEY OF ACHIEVEMENT
Mental resilience, determination and hard work in her career have formed the backbone of Popescu’s rise over the last 14 years. “You have to invest in your career yourself and you must be disciplined,” she says.
Working 14 to 16 hours in her job and then studying at night and, at the weekends, has been part of her working life since arriving in the UK. “I have had to have the mental resilience to push my boundaries when I was on the last level of my exhaustion,” she says. “I have never taken any breaks from work and asked my employer for time off to study or for a budget to study. I have done everything ethically, by taking annual leave and doing it in my personal time.”
On arrival in the UK back in 2010, Popescu started out by working in hospitality and learning English, eventually moving into an administration and finance position for a family business in Bristol. She then took on a role in accountancy, where she decided that she wanted to forge a career in engineering.
Her first role was at Foster Wheeler – as an engineering technical assistant on a major oil and gas project in the Middle East – which she enjoyed, despite being cut towards the end of the programme.
Other roles have included with the Environment Agency, managing department approvals worth £125m and supporting flood prevention efforts; Jacobs Engineering, supporting the IDF framework for Hinkley Point C, managing over 200 qualified professionals; and the Ministry of Defence, working on a £65m project, coordinating a team of 80-120 people and fixing significant safety issues.
She also did critical work at Thames Water, implementing GDPR rules within every commercial contract to prevent future fines, and helping to reduce expenditure by 40% on a £1bn portfolio in a matter of few months through best practices of procuring stuff.
Ambitious Popescu has always been interested in the defence industry, whether that be land, marine or air, but the recent Babcock move was inspired by a desire to explore submarines and space and, because it was missing from her portfolio.
At Babcock, Popescu is responsible for project setup, monitoring, performance reporting, cost estimation, cost control, risk management, and supporting project management and governments throughout the project lifecycle.
“My focus is on proactive monitoring and control to ensure project success and allocation to support various submarine projects within the Mission Systems business unit,” she enthuses.
LEADING FROM
THE FRONT
Popescu heads up multi-million-pound projects at Babcock, as she has done with other companies for more than a decade, during which time she has honed and developed her leadership skills and style.
She started her leadership journey with the Chartered Management Institute and, was recently awarded a Leadership Fellowship from the UK Aspen Institute. As a leader, Popescu realises the importance of emotional intelligence, situational leadership, and building trust with her teams.
“I think it comes to some people naturally, but leadership is something that you can learn,” she says. “I think if you have a strong base personality, character, moral and values, then you are naturally built for leadership. My approach has always been to treat people ethically as the one thing I hate the most is injustice.
“I am not a person that likes to do a role by stepping on other people. So, for me, it came naturally where I had to invest in leadership on the emotional intelligence side, because there are certain elements such as self-awareness and self-regulation.”
Popescu is proactive, as you might have already gathered, but believes sometimes you have to “hold back a bit” and wait before proactively reacting to certain tasks that your team is working on.
“I think emotional intelligence was one area where I thought that it is very beneficial to invest into,” she says. “And then secondly, my leadership style is not fixed. I always went for a situational leadership style where I customise my style based on people’s needs, rather than having one style, which I apply to everyone, because that does not necessarily always work as some people need guidance.”
She adds: “You need people that you need to hold their hand throughout and, you need people that do not need to be supported in any way, be micromanaged and supervised, who are naturally proactive.”
Popescu leads from the front and, believes she has always built trust with the people that she manages, who know that she is working proactively every day, while looking ahead to the next six months and beyond.
“Leadership is not only something that you need for a job, but is also something that you need on a day-to-day basis,” she says. “People do not realise how important leadership is in our day-to-day lives and how we react.”
ETHICAL LEADERSHIP
During her stellar career to date, she has come across some inspiring leaders, but also experienced unethical behaviour from some in senior positions of authority that have shaped the leader she is. Ethical leadership is something she is especially passionate about, and Popescu is determined to raise awareness of the need for a measurement system, as she believes there are not currently any KPIs to measure leadership across industry.
She explains: “How do you measure ethical leadership? It is something that I think is very important. In the future, I think most organisations will need ethical leaders to inspire that level of motivation, and people do not realise that one person can impact the entire structure of a company.
“I will try to do more research into what defines an ethical leader. In every job, I have put it above my personal gain. I returned to the MoD two or three times for less money, because they needed
the help. My professional journey was not about the money, it was about contributing to something that I thought at that time is meaningful and constructive, or for a good cause.”
MENTORING
Another strand of Popescu’s busy life is mentoring and she has roles with various organisations, while also supporting young professionals and children from challenging backgrounds.
Mentorship has been important in her journey and she understands the impact of having a mentor, so shares her own experience of being self-reliant and independent from a young age.
“I have been in their shoes as my parents got divorced when I was nine or 10. I accepted this, but thought, I need to do something for myself,” she says.
“I enjoy mentoring,” says Popescu. “I support mentoring for women at the Engineering Society, I am a mentor with the Association for Project Management and I support mentoring with the Chartered Management Institute.
“I am also working at the Princess Trust on mentoring kids that have challenging backgrounds. This is interesting, because you find people that have a lot of personal issues, and really struggle to balance pushing for success and then focusing on their life.”
When mentoring, she encourages young professionals to focus on their goals, eliminate distractions like social media, and invest time in learning and professional development.
FUTURE GOALS
Popescu’s ambition is to become the first dual-national under 35 and woman to reach a C-suite level position in the UK, while she wants to continue breaking boundaries and setting new standards.
She is on a mission to inspire the next generation: “I say to people. If I have done it in less than 10 years as a non-English speaker, with no support, family and friends – you have a better chance.
“I look at people’s situation, and they have more comfort than I could ever afford. But they must be focused and motivated.
“I want to inspire other people and show them that nothing is impossible with hard work and determination, and maybe they can inspire for the better. If you expect fairness, you probably will not get it.
“You just have to build your capabilities and opportunities, because waiting and waiting, will not necessarily solve your problems.”
Popescu is pushing the boundaries as she targets a future role as an executive leader.
She adds: “I want to break the boundary, and by providing excellence and trying to be exceptional, maybe I will have the opportunity to break that.”