Iulian Alexandru Boicu

Member Association: Volt Romania

Gender: Male

What strategy would you implement to recruit and retain highly specialised volunteers for the functional teams, for example in communications, policy, or data, over a full Board term? 

The real problem isn’t recruitment. It’s retention. Volt attracts motivated people. It just doesn’t keep them long enough for that motivation to become useful.
For recruitment: identify the skill gaps first, then go looking. Generic volunteer calls produce generic volunteers. Targeted outreach to Volters with relevant professional backgrounds produces specialists. This is how I built moderation and content teams for Gameloft and League of Legends Romania. You recruit for a specific role, not for enthusiasm.
For retention: specialists disengage when their skills aren’t actually used. The fix is structured contribution pathways with clear scope, defined deliverables, and visible impact. At Booking Holdings and SCOR I designed programme frameworks where every contributor knew exactly what they owned and how it connected to the larger objective. Same logic applies here.
Concretely: a skills registry across functional teams, structured onboarding with defined 90-day contribution goals, and a quarterly review cycle to catch disengagement before people quietly disappear.
Retention is a systems problem. I build systems.

Non-executive Board members must both support and challenge the executives. Describe a situation where you would publicly back the Co-Presidents, and one where you would publicly dissent. What guides your choice?

The non-executive role exists because unchallenged leadership makes bad decisions with confidence. My default is constructive support. But support is not silence.
I would publicly back the Co-Presidents when they take an unpopular but strategically correct position that the organisation needs to hear. Leadership sometimes means absorbing short-term criticism to protect long-term direction. If the call is consistent with Volt’s values and backed by sound reasoning, visible Board support reinforces institutional credibility. I would stand behind it without hedging.
I would publicly dissent if a decision systematically disadvantaged newer member states or CEE chapters, whether in resource allocation, representation, or policy priority. Volt’s pan-European identity is not decorative. If the structure of decisions consistently favours established chapters at the expense of emerging ones, that is a values failure, not a tactical disagreement. I would say so, clearly and on the record.
The question that guides my choice: is this a difference in approach, or a difference in values? Approach differences get resolved internally through debate. Values failures get named publicly, because silence makes the Board complicit.
I come from environments where not speaking up always costs more than the discomfort of doing so. That doesn’t change because the context is political.

What would you do if you believed the Board was making a decision that conflicted with Volt Europa's core values?

Raise it internally, directly, and early. Not as a procedural complaint but as a substantive argument: here is the decision, here is the value it conflicts with, here is why that matters. Vague discomfort achieves nothing. Precise objection creates a record and forces a real response.
If the challenge is heard and the decision is revised or adequately justified, the process worked. That’s what deliberation is for.
If the decision proceeds unchanged despite a clear values conflict, I escalate to the Council and go on record publicly. Not to cause disruption, but because accountability requires visibility. A Board that can override its own values without consequence has no values, only preferences.
In disaster recovery there is a principle: a failure you cannot see is worse than one you can, because it compounds undetected. The same applies to governance. The moment a values breach becomes something the Board manages quietly rather than addresses transparently, institutional trust starts eroding. And that damage is cumulative.
I would not let that happen quietly.