Simona Baciu

Background

About Simona Baciu

Simona Baciu is a trailblazer in education, founder and President of Transylvania College Foundation, InIm Institute and the C-EDU Cluster for Education, as well as a founding member of Rethink Romania Association. Speaker, trainer, writer and mentor, Simona Baciu is part of several national and international organizations, being a voice for the education of this century. In the early 1990s, as a teacher in a state school in Romania, Simona decided to establish a kindergarten. The Happy Kids kindergarten was opened in 1993 in one of the rooms of her house. This is how Transylvania College was founded, today a prestigious institution with over 700 students. Continuing the mission to make a change in society and in the Romanian educational environment, Transylvania College Foundation, under the guidance of Simona Baciu, established InIm Institute, a national organization that works today to support the socio-emotional health and well-being of teachers from Romania. InIm Institute actively and repeatedly organizes programs and training courses and events for the socio-emotional development of teachers, following its vision of supporting Good Teachers who have the courage to bring creativity and innovation to schools in Romania. At the core of the organization's activity are analysis and research programs. Among them is the National Study of Teacher’s Well-Being in Romania, carried out jointly by the Harvard Flourishing Center and Positive ED, which measured the level of teacher’s well-being among respondents in Romania in 2021. Convinced that socio-emotional health is indispensable for the education of the 21st century, Simona wrote together with Susan Shapiro the book "The Teacher Within", released in English and Romanian, for teachers who want to bring wellness to the classroom and want to teach with empathy and compassion. In 2022, Simona Baciu and Susan Shapiro jointly released their second book,"The Teacher Within Guide. 100 Exercises for Well-Being", through which the two propose a set of practical exercises to help create the optimal teaching and learning environment for teachers and students. Simona Baciu is a laureate of the British International School Lifetime Award, due to her outstanding contribution to education, while the school she founded received the High Patronage of the Custodian of the Crown of Romania. As a member of the Board of Directors of Round Square, Global Connections, the Princess Margareta Foundation of Romania and TedX Heroes, Simona acts as a change agent for education both at home and abroad.