Anca Matcovschi
Founder | The Diffusion Lab
Former CCMO | ASPIRE NSF ERC
What unique strengths do you bring to your professional and other roles?
Resilience, resourcefulness, curiosity and systems thinking show up as recurring themes in my work and leadership. Growing up in Europe and later working across three continents, agencies, startups and PE‑backed companies taught me to “stay in the firehose” without losing my footing: I assume good intent, learn quickly, focus on what’s most critical and work to leave every team and project better than I found it. I pair that grit with genuine intellectual curiosity. I’m happiest when I’m learning something new and immediately looking for a way to apply it, which is why my path runs from early creative advertising and journalism into data‑driven marketing, change management, economic development and now a Ph.D. in CTE.
I also bring a strong change‑management lens: I’m comfortable mapping messy systems, designing for diffusion of innovations and helping organizations navigate from status quo to new ways of working. Underneath all of that sits empathy and a commitment to finding common ground. I speak multiple languages and have always been drawn to spaces where innovators, policymakers, business leaders, educators and residents share the table. That ability to listen deeply, translate across worlds and keep the big picture in mind while handling details is what I try to offer every team and community I’m part of.
Can you share a pivotal moment in your career that significantly shaped your path?
One of the most pivotal moments happened in my first “real” marketing job, long before titles like VP or CMO were even imaginable. I was a new copywriter at a boutique advertising agency in my hometown of Iași, Romania, fresh out of high school journalism and literary competitions. My direct supervisor and mentor was the agency owner himself, Florin Mare, brilliant with ads and sales. Early in this role, he gave me a task and left for meetings. I finished quickly and then literally logged “waiting for Florin” in my time sheet for the next several hours while I surfed social media like a typical college kid. When he returned and saw it, he was flabbergasted — in a way that changed my life. He said, “Look, I don’t expect you to be super productive at this stage of your career, but I also don’t pay you to sit around and wait. You are here to learn and develop as a creative professional. If you don’t have a task, learn something, then come tell me what you learned. I’m not even mad about the timesheet. But you can never waste your time like this again.”
That moment fundamentally reset my relationship with time and initiative. It taught me that “idle” time is a decision, that I own my learning and that my value is tied to how I use unstructured moments as much as to assigned work. Ever since, whether at an agency in Dubai, a marketing automation team in Romania, or an engineering research center in Utah, I’ve treated every lull as a chance to read, observe, experiment or build something new. That mindset of never simply waiting, always learning has underpinned my career pivots into e-commerce SaaS, higher ed, edtech, labor market analytics, electrification and commercialization. And I can’t wait to see where it takes me next!
What’s your next big goal or project in your professional journey?
I’m ready for my next adventure, and this next chapter is about standing even more squarely at the intersection of innovation and place by helping founders, communities and workforce partners turn emerging technologies into local opportunities. ASPIRE gave me a rare chance to go far beyond a traditional CMO role: co‑shaping workforce commercialization concepts, contributing in rooms where new markets are literally being defined (and then I get to go create them!), and pairing that work with doctoral research on diffusion of innovation and workforce adaptation.
Through the Nucleus Innovation Fund’s MarketEdge program, that experience crystallized into a clear mission: Build and support ventures and initiatives that make electrification, AI-enabled and other complex emerging technologies investable and adoptable for real communities, where they can result in local economic and job creation opportunities. Throughout my career, I’ve partnered with founders, civic and economic development leaders, and workforce organizations, which has inspired me to start The Diffusion Lab — an outlet for my original frameworks and approaches for designing dual‑audience go‑to‑market strategies that work for both capital and civic stakeholders. I have a feeling, in fact, that Utah holds (and is actively developing) so much more innovation potential in this area than even I can see at the moment. My next big goal is to take on a role central to this work and continue to shape business models, workforce pipelines and communication strategies so Utah’s innovation economy and its communities rise together.