Welcome to my corner of the internet.

After more than fifteen years inside boardrooms, merger discussions and sales floors across multiple languages, I built this space for myself.

It's not a brochure. It's an evolving space for my work, research and thinking in the open. My role has always been that of a translator: connecting commercial numbers with human behavior, corporate rhetoric with lived reality, and strategy with execution.

Much of this is work in progress, and intentionally so. It grows as I grow.

I'm Adela. Good to have you here.

Commercial Leadership · Fractional & Interim

Adela Grama

Commercial leadership at the threshold between organisation and human.

Over 15 years in B2B software markets, up to €100M revenue responsibility. I lead sales, marketing and negotiations where systems come under pressure, and research how we lead humanely in the New Work Era.

For organisations For universities & organisations

15+Years in B2B software markets

€100MRevenue responsibility

5 → 25Sales team built

6Languages, five countries

Commercial Leadership

The strategy is always ready. The organisation rarely is.

I take commercial responsibility on the C-level at the point where execution becomes a human problem. My work is done when the room moves without me.

Fractional, interim or by mandate

01 · Commercial Leadership in B2B Software

Go-to-market, rethought.

For the age of AI, not the last one.

Most go-to-market plans are still written for buyers who no longer exist. AI changes how customers search, compare and decide, and how sales and marketing teams work. I help B2B software companies rethink how they reach, win and keep customers, and then build it: positioning, pricing, the sales organisation, market entry across Europe.

When companies merge, or move from on-premise to SaaS, I bring sales teams, pricing and customer bases together, and negotiate with the people who have to carry it, before value erodes.

For software companies, PE-backed groups and their boards.

02 · For Newly Appointed CEOs

A score for the first six months.

Four movements, then I step back.

A new CEO inherits a commercial organisation, a board's expectations and a room full of unwritten rules. I work beside you through the moments that set your position.

Mapping

The real hierarchy, the unspoken rules, the numbers behind the numbers.

Navigation

The first critical conversations and negotiations, prepared together.

III

Building

Your team, your decision rhythms, your commercial agenda.

Handover

You lead from your own foundation. I leave.

For CEOs in their first year, especially in software and B2B.

“Negotiation is where human skills prove themselves, most of all in a crisis.”

Field Notes

What stuck looks like. And what moved.

SaaS platform · European market entry

Product-market fit at home, a market entry strategy written entirely from headquarters. France and Italy don't buy from a translated pitch deck.

I built the entry in the market, in the language, with local pricing logic, and turned two empty regions into a €5M key account portfolio.

PE-backed software group · PMI

Five acquired entities, one investment thesis, an integration plan everyone had approved. Twelve months in, cross-selling was near zero. Each legacy leadership team was still protecting its own P&L, politely, invisibly.

We made the loyalty conflict speakable and rebuilt the commercial structure around one number instead of five. New-customer acquisition rose 20% within six months.

Software company · business model shift

From on-premise to a subscription SaaS model. The board saw a pricing project. The sales team saw their commission logic and professional identity being rewritten.

We rebuilt the pricing architecture with the team instead of for it. The people expected to resist became the ones who carried the change.

Engagements anonymised. Patterns are real, identifying details are not.

The thread

Between the lecture hall and the boardroom.

I hold the place where the next generation meets the concept of work, and learns that understanding counts more than the right words.

The tension

A whole generation enters working life believing competence means mastering the vocabulary. Frameworks, methods, buzzwords. Often the opposite is true: the terms hide that nobody remembers what it is actually about.

What I do

Translate instead of intimidate. Show what stands behind the buzzwords, so people understand the thing rather than repeat the language. And give early what I learned late: clarity is worth more than vocabulary, and leadership is a human capacity, not a terminology.

Why me

Over fifteen years in the rooms where the buzzwords are made. Now in the lecture halls where they are learned. I can translate because I have stood in both worlds.

Research & Teaching

Leadership taught from lived experience, not from frameworks.

For universities, business schools, institutions and organisations. In English, French and German, across Europe and the MENA region.

Research

The connection between behavioral science and the way we lead. How trust, clarity and the human nervous system shape organisations under pressure. PhD in preparation at the intersection of behavioral science and leadership.

Teaching

Guest lectures, seminars and workshops for students, young professionals and leadership teams. Case-based and practice-oriented: the commercial reality of organisations, told by someone who carried the numbers.

Leadership in the New Work EraWomen in LeadershipBeyond the buzzwordsCommercial practice through case studiesTrust & psychological safetyLeading across cultures

Approach

No framework thinking. Students and participants learn to see what is actually happening in a room, and to trust their own judgment before they reach for the vocabulary.

Where and in which language

DACHGerman · English
Romania & Southeast EuropeRomanian · German · English
France, Belgium, SwitzerlandFrench · English
Maghreb: Morocco, TunisiaFrench · English
Egypt, Jordan, QatarEnglish
Italy, SpainItalian · Spanish · English

Education

MA European StudiesUniversity of Vienna

BA European Cultural HistoryUniversité Paris-Sorbonne · Universität Augsburg

General Management ProgramFrankfurt School of Finance & Management

Negotiation MasteryHarvard Business School

PR & CommunicationMIBEG Institut Medien, Köln

PhD in preparationBehavioral science and leadership

“Leadership is not a career stage. It is a daily practice of being human.”

III

Thinking in the Open

My own corner of the internet.

Ideas beyond the work context, from my own judgment. Where experience and research meet, in public.

The Human Nature of Leadership

Essays on why transformations fail despite sound strategy. Where lived experience and research come together, chapter by chapter.

Read on Substack →

The Monday Report

A weekly column. One boardroom convention, one study, one personal room, one coined term per issue.

Follow on LinkedIn →

In the making

A space for women who are done performing. For those who want to build something that lasts, and to hand it on to the next generation.

Coming soon

Intelligence Is Never Loud. It Is Peace of Mind.

On the difference between performing competence and possessing it.

Who Do We Become Through the Act of Leading

On leadership as a process of becoming, not a position to be reached.

Profile

Lived experience, not theory.

I've built sales organisations from nothing, negotiated in critical moments, led through mergers, and rebuilt teams when alignment collapsed.

Born in Transylvania, where thinking in more than one world comes naturally. A francophile by education, at home in six languages. I look at leadership through several lenses at once: biology, social behavior, historical patterns and the numbers.

What this is not

Not standard efficiency toolkits or KPI-driven acceleration. Not coaching where someone asks you questions and waits. Not consulting where someone delivers a deck and leaves. A peer in your corner, who restores the conditions under which people find clarity, commit, and carry the execution themselves.

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Track record · a selection

2025 –Interim & Fractional Leadership

Commercial leadership mandates in B2B software, The Human Nature of Leadership research, guest teaching.

2024 – 25Chief Sales & Marketing OfficerproLogistik GmbH · Dortmund, Nantes, Vienna, Zürich

€100M revenue. Led the process: sales organisation, reporting structure established, blueprint for EMEA go-to-market. SaaS subscription model transition. Post-merger integration.

2020 – 24Director Salesecovium GmbH

EMEA go-to-market, SaaS transformation, pricing architecture, sales process, crisis leadership through COVID.

2015 – 19Key Account ManagerTIMOCOM GmbH

Strategic accounts including DHL, GEODIS, XPO, Uber Freight. Markets: France, Italy.

EarlierPR & Communication

Appointments in PR and corporate communication.