My name is Ioana Patrascu and I joined BRI as a Trainee Administrator in February 2025. Approximately two years ago in August 2024, I made a life-changing decision to pack up my life in Romania and to move to the UK permanently. The main reason was to be with my long-term partner. We have been together for a long time but were fed up of being in different time zones for far too long. We decided it was time to stop living in different countries and be together. If we fast forward to the present, we are getting married next year. If someone would have told me back then that insolvency would become part of my love story too, I would have laughed.
But here we are.
Before moving to the UK, I was a Probation Officer in Romania – a job that I loved, because I was helping people who genuinely needed it and were appreciative of my support. I worked with people at some of the hardest points in their life, who were trying to rebuild their life after it had effectively fallen apart.
When I moved to the UK, I assumed that this part of my working life was over. But I was leaving for personal reasons, so this chapter had to be put behind me. I also wanted more from life.
I like to say that Insolvency found me, rather than the other way around. My now sister-in-law works in the industry, and she mentioned that there might be a role going. I will be honest; I walked in with zero expectations. I only knew what insolvency was from the books I studied for a semester at university (in Romania) as part of my law degree there.
It turns out that I am the kind of person who gets a spark of joy from a well-organised checklist, who likes ticking a box and closing a task. But the spreadsheets are only half the job. The other half is sitting next to someone on what might be one of the worst periods of their working life – or life in general.
I realised that I did not actually leave behind what I loved about my previous job. I just found it in a different shape because in both fields you need to hold two things at once: a process that has to be followed precisely and a human being who needs to be heard. And both, done properly, are ultimately about helping people find their way through to the other side of something difficult.
However, I could not have come to this realisation if it were not for the people I met at BRI Business Recovery and Insolvency, who properly introduced me to the industry and taught me how you do this job the right way. I believe that this is the most important part of the story.
When I moved to the UK, I left behind my family, a lot of my friends, and a version of “home” as I knew it. I had always known that I might leave to be with my partner and thought that I would just have to get used to missing it. Now, I have to be careful about how I say this, so it isn’t misinterpreted as what I’m expected to say but the people I work with have genuinely made this place feel like I did not leave home. Not because anyone tried especially hard to make it feel that way, but because they are real, heartfelt – in the plain sense of the word. And not just to me, but to everyone.
This August marks two years since I left Romania. I will not pretend that it was not a big leap, but looking back, I can say without hesitation that it was the best decision I could have made – for my relationship, for the family I am about to start and, in a way that I never saw coming at that time, for my career too.