Andra Costache (Parliamentary Advisor): “Do what you love and you will never have to work a day in your life”

Parliamentary Advisor. Youth Worker. Volunteer. Promoting a sense of community and engaging people in changing the world. Her educational background includes a Degree in History and ongoing PR studies. Today, Andra Mihaela Costache is also an Ambassador of the campaign LikeRom, that in the view of this year’s Centenary wants to create a platform where people from the roma community can be inspired by successful examples of those around them.

By Romanita Oprea

The first thing one notices when getting in touch with Andra is the passion that translates in every word she uses. One can easily see that she is really involved in every professional decision she took along her path so far, and she will continue to do so.

Andra Mihaela Costache started her professional road in 2015 with an internship in HR at ArcelorMittal and continued in HR at an IT company. Born and raised in Galati, she stayed in her hometown, and decided to make a change for the better there.

She is currently taking two directions in her profession: as from July 2017, she has been part of Romania’s Senate, as a Parliamentary Adviser Senator for George Stanga, and she continues her HR Manager road, at IV Future. As a Parliamentary Adviser, part of her duties are: providing support for meetings and events; dealing with general public inquiries by telephone, mail, email and in person and taking appropriate initial action; research for Parliamentary and Committee issues; policy development; support constituency related campaigns; draft correspondence, consultation responses and annual reports; liaison with press officers and central research unit; administrative work; etc.

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“Both in my personal, as well as professional life, I consider myself to be a passionate person. I put passion in everything I do and I follow the principle: <> I try to do things that give me a satisfaction firstly at a soul level,” Andra says.

It’s true that her two jobs are in quite different segments. Her passion for human resources is a result of taking part in a conference where one of the speakers said that HR is not about people, but about people’s problems. This is when she related the most with the field, as she was always interested in solving people’s problems and offering them better options.

Even her job as a recruiter in IT doesn’t fulfill that description all the time, she has her volunteering work and the politics to help with that. “My entry into politics happened by chance. Things just fell into the right place. I was working at the TEDx conferences, an event that was very close to my soul, when the opportunity arose. Therefore, I started working in politics, alongside with what I was doing in the corporate environment”.

Only 25 years old, Andra has always been determined and focused on her professional career. She is part of the young wave of Romanians who are truly involved in their communities and making changes for the better.

In her voice and on her face you will only see the desire to do good, to help, to act, to take a stand. She is not a follower, but a Doer. Alongside her political career, Andra has always been a keen volunteer in different organizations and for different causes, being a former member of Rotaract and currently a member of Rotary Vigoris Galati and co-founder of Centrul de Initiativa Comunitara (The Center for Communitary Initiative) – the association’s mission being to identify the cultural, educational and social needs of these communities and find sustainable and usable solutions for resolving them. Moreover, the association promotes and supports values such as continuous education, balance, honesty, team work and sense of community.

“An NGO definitely has an impact, even if it’s just a small one or only at a local level. But even though it seems small, I am always trying to explain to people how I see its importance: our actions may seem quite small, but if we think about the Ocean, for example, we realize it’s composed of a multitude of drops. What we do here, what other people do in Bucharest or other corner of the country, or even outside Romania, can create waves at certain times. The necessary waves of change,” explained Costache.

She has never let herself be influenced by the failures she’s been through. As she points out, instead of letting herself be defeated, she chose to let the failure teach her what to do in order to be better, what to do for herself to succeed and make the journey she chose a better one. And with this mindset, opportunities started to come. And now she is seen by many young people as a role model.

Recently, Andra became part of the campaign LikeRom, more precisely was chosen as one of the campaign’s few Ambassadors. As she admits, the fact that she is part of the roma ethnicity is a fact not known by many people. And that’s because she didn’t tell people about her belonging to this group for years. She openly admits that she had a problem with recognizing who she was. “Many times I shielded away from telling people I was roma. In some contexts I never told people for the simple fact that I was afraid of being judged or stigmatized. That is a reality we must face in Romania. But, since I’ve had the courage to admit I am part of the roma community, I feel much better and I realized I have more courage in everything that I do,” said Costache.

How did that change happen for her? “Gelu Duminica’s speech at TEDx about preconceptions influenced me and spoke to me. I was interviewing him and during one of the questions I told him my grandfather was gypsy. It felt natural to do it. What followed after that I think it was me getting more mature and realizing that being different is being unique. What we are on the inside and what we feel is what is representing us. The career, the job positions are built. Today we have them, tomorrow we might not. What remains is who we really are,” said Andra Costache.

This is one of the main reasons why she believes that a platform such as LikeRom needs to exist and will speak up for the roma people who are too afraid to recognize their heritage. She is convinced that it will give them the necessary nudge to recognize who they are and live a sincere and more meaningful life. Although she has never felt discriminated, she admits it affects her to see people around her, such as friends, colleagues, partners that talk about roma people with hatred, using preconceived ideas about their ethnicity as an excuse to accuse some social behaviors. “And this is worse than being directly discriminated. I feel powerless to change perspectives so deeply rooted,” added Andra.

And that mindset is something that the LikeRom platform wants to change as well. This campaign tells the successful stories of 10 professionals that want to be the community’s image in order to inspire other roma professionals to join them. 

“I learned that in life the biggest pleasure is doing the things others tell you you won’t be able to do. In the future, my biggest desire would be to combine a little of what I do on the volunteer side with the political side. To work on humanitarian diplomacy, where I believe I could have a great impact”.