by Dan Zaharia
At a time when AI promises to rewrite the rules of the game in all industries – from writing code to making strategic decisions – we choose to celebrate the people who not only understand change, but shape it.
PIN Awards 2025 comes naturally in this context: it is the moment when we recognize those who are already making the transition from hype to value.
Artificial intelligence is not magic or a threat. It is a powerful tool – but, like any tool, it does not do anything on its own. It takes leadership, courage, education and active communities that choose to intelligently integrate it. PIN Awards is about these communities – about the companies, leaders and initiatives that choose not to wait for the future, but to build it.
This year, three special guests take the PIN Awards stage to offer us rare and valuable insights.
👉 Romek Lubaczewski, PwC Poland partner and GBS & BPO industry veteran, will talk about how AI, RPA and data analytics can reposition service centers as real value drivers.
👉 Elias van Herwaarden, global investment location strategist, will help us understand how Iași and our region are perceived from abroad – and what we need to do to become a strategic destination, not just an operational one.
👉 Marcel Ionescu-Heroiu, Senior Specialist at the World Bank, will provide an overview of the regional context – infrastructure, demographics, connectivity – and how these influence the development of tech industries in emerging cities.
Romek, with over 30 years of experience and 55 centers opened in Europe, sends an essential message: AI must be driven from within organizations, with trained people and clear standards. Automation is not only about reduced costs, but especially communicating the real value delivered, an area where many companies still have to catch up. And our region – with its talent, emerging leadership and appetite for change – has exactly the right ingredients to become the “home of operational AI”.
More and more companies are starting to see Iași not just as a provider of human resources, but as a tech ecosystem in the making. With a solid university infrastructure, innovation hubs like Fab Lab Iași and Zbor Hub, educational initiatives like Digital Stack, and an active network of professionals, the city is playing more and more seriously in the big league. But the game is just beginning.
To transform AI hype into sustainable value, we need applied, interdisciplinary and ethical technology education – from high school to postgraduate. Without a generation prepared to collaborate with AI, to understand the patterns and limits, but also to ask questions about the social impact, we will remain spectators to the ongoing revolution.
And we, at PIN, choose to be active participants. PINmagazine and PIN Awards are not mere showcases. They are platforms built together with Dan Radu, Adrian Mironescu and Catrinel Zaharia that gather, recognize and connect – exactly what an ecosystem needs to grow healthy and visible.
I’ve said it before: keep calm, don’t panic, be prepared.
But today I’m saying something else, more relevant than ever: “AI asks questions. Iași must be among those answering.”
