This is for preview purpose only. It is unlisted and unindexed on the Internet
Meet Corina
Corina Taban is the founder of 934 Leadership Advisors, based in Paris, France. A former strategic partnerships leader at Ubisoft, Microsoft, and Meta, she is also completing a doctorate in organizational behavior, focusing on the psychological contract and gender in the technology sector. Her work sits at the intersection of performance, leadership, and human sustainability.
The Space Between Performance and People
There is a quiet intensity to the way Corina Taban speaks about leadership. Not the intensity of ambition for its own sake, but the kind that comes from years of watching how organizations succeed or unravel from the inside. She has spent her career in rooms where decisions carry weight, where negotiations shape markets, and where performance is measured in numbers that stretch into the millions. Yet what occupies her mind most today is something far less visible.
She thinks about expectations. About trust. About what happens in the silent space between what companies promise and what employees believe. She thinks about the human experience beneath the strategy.
Her journey into that space was not planned. It unfolded gradually, shaped by geography, by difference, and by a persistent curiosity about how people grow within demanding systems.
Growing Up With an International Compass
Corina was born and raised in a small town in Romania. From the beginning, her life stretched beyond borders. She studied and worked in Greece, Germany, and India before eventually settling in France. Moving across cultures early in life shaped the way she observed the world. She learned to notice subtle differences in communication, power dynamics, and expectations. She became comfortable being the newcomer.
Her academic training began in public administration. At the time, she imagined building a career in that field. But once she stepped into it, something felt incomplete. The pace was slower than she had hoped. The structures felt rigid. She found herself craving environments that moved faster and required constant adaptation.
Technology offered that. It was international by nature. It demanded learning, reinvention, and resilience. She entered the tech world first through Ubisoft, working on strategic partnerships in the PC gaming category. It was her first real exposure to how innovation, negotiation, and creativity intersect. She was drawn to the complexity of ecosystems and the challenge of aligning multiple interests toward a common goal.
From there, her path accelerated.
A Young Negotiator in a Complex Market
One of the most defining chapters of her career began when she joined Microsoft to lead strategic partnerships for the France News division. She was young compared to her counterparts in other countries. She was also a foreigner navigating the intricacies of the French media landscape. The role demanded fluency in negotiation, strategic thinking, and stakeholder management at a high level.
The learning curve was steep. There was little room for hesitation. She had to build credibility quickly in an ecosystem that often favors established profiles who already fit expectations.
Looking back, she describes that period as one of the most formative of her professional life.
“The learning curve was incredibly steep, but it became one of the most stimulating and formative periods of my professional journey.”
In that environment, she discovered something essential about herself. She thrives in contexts where trust is placed not only in what she already knows, but in her capacity to grow. Being given responsibility before feeling completely ready forced her to expand faster than she might have otherwise. It sharpened her negotiation skills. It deepened her understanding of power structures. It strengthened her resilience.
After Microsoft, her scope widened further at Meta, where she worked on international partnerships and high stakes collaborations across markets. The scale increased. The complexity multiplied. She negotiated multi million dollar agreements and collaborated with senior executives across continents. Each experience reinforced her awareness that leadership quality shapes not only outcomes, but culture and well being.
The Weight and Gift of Being Different
Throughout her career, Corina has carried a quiet awareness of not fully fitting the traditional mold. She was often the youngest in the room. She spoke with an accent. She moved between cultures with ease, yet that very fluidity sometimes set her apart.
For a time, she saw that difference as a disadvantage. She worked harder to establish legitimacy. She pushed herself to raise her standards continuously. Over time, however, her perspective shifted.
She came to understand that standing slightly outside the expected profile gave her something others did not have. It sharpened her sensitivity to nuance. It strengthened her ability to read interpersonal dynamics. It allowed her to connect across cultures and build trust in diverse environments.
Her multilingual background and international exposure became assets rather than obstacles. Instead of blending in, she learned to lean into what made her distinct. The same qualities that once felt like friction became a source of perspective and strength.
This realization did not arrive overnight. It emerged through experience, through negotiation tables, through moments of doubt, and through the steady accumulation of proof that competence transcends conformity.
When Curiosity Became Scholarship
While building her career in global technology companies, another thread was quietly developing. Corina found herself increasingly drawn to questions about organizational behavior. She noticed patterns in how leaders influenced engagement. She observed how unspoken expectations shaped performance and retention.
Eventually, curiosity turned into commitment. While still working in demanding corporate roles, she began a doctoral program focused on the psychological contract, the unwritten set of expectations and perceived obligations between employees and organizations.
Her research goes further, examining how this psychological contract may be gendered, and how societal norms shape women’s experiences in the technology sector. It is an exploration of invisible dynamics that influence motivation, engagement, and career trajectories.
Balancing a doctorate alongside high intensity corporate work required discipline and endurance. Yet for Corina, the intellectual expansion felt necessary. It allowed her to move beyond intuition and anchor her observations in rigorous theory and research.
Her work received international recognition, including a Best Doctoral Paper award at the 2025 Academy of Management Annual Conference. For her, the award was meaningful not simply as validation, but as confirmation that the questions she was asking matter.
Building 934 Leadership Advisors
Today, Corina leads 934 Leadership Advisors, a leadership advisory practice rooted in both lived experience and academic research. The work focuses on helping leaders and organizations navigate performance, culture, identity, and growth in fast changing environments.
She speaks often about operating at two levels: performance and human sustainability. Years in tech showed her how relentless expectations can erode engagement if leadership is not equipped to support people effectively. She witnessed managers stretched thin by transformation, restructuring, and digital acceleration. She saw how quickly disengagement can spread when leaders feel unsupported.
Her approach is grounded rather than accusatory. She does not frame the issue as individual failure. Instead, she sees systemic pressure and a need for better tools.
At the heart of her work is a simple conviction.
“Leadership is not just about results; it is about shaping conditions where people can do their best work without compromising who they are.”
Through advisory engagements, training, and executive education, she helps leaders develop clarity, courage, and self awareness. She encourages them to build trust based relationships and to align performance expectations with sustainable practices. When leadership improves, she has seen the ripple effects extend across teams and organizations.
Her doctoral research informs this practice. By making invisible psychological dynamics more visible, she equips leaders to understand not just what drives outcomes, but what shapes engagement beneath the surface.
A Definition of Success Rooted in Alignment
Despite her achievements in global corporations and academia, Corina measures success in personal terms. For her, it begins with alignment. Feeling engaged. Feeling energized. Continuing to learn.
She values ambition, but not at the cost of well being or relationships. Reading and theatre nourish her intellectually. Physical routines ground her. She half jokingly refers to good sleep, regular exercise, and healthy eating as her holy trinity. In demanding environments, she has learned that resilience depends on these foundations.
Family influence also runs deep. Her mother’s strength and ambition modeled determination. Her father’s consistent treatment of his daughters as capable and independent instilled confidence early on. These early dynamics shaped how she enters professional spaces, with agency rather than hesitation.
She does not anchor herself to fixed role models. Instead, she draws inspiration from qualities she observes in others, sometimes in brief everyday interactions. Integrity. Confidence. Grace under pressure. These attributes resonate more than titles.
The Stretch Zone and the Future
As she finalizes her doctoral thesis, Corina stands at a moment of integration. Corporate experience, academic research, and advisory practice are converging. Her ambition is to expand her impact internationally through executive education, speaking engagements, and strategic partnerships. She envisions scaling her influence while remaining intellectually curious.
If there is one message she returns to often, it is about readiness. Many of the opportunities that shaped her career arrived before she felt fully prepared. Accepting them required stepping into uncertainty.
She encourages others not to wait for perfect confidence. Growth often happens in what she calls the stretch zone, that space just beyond comfort. Self awareness, adaptability, and continuous learning matter more than flawless preparation.
Her own life reflects that principle. From Romania to Paris. From public administration to Big Tech. From negotiation tables to academic conferences. Each transition required trust in her ability to grow into the role.
Staying Slightly Outside the Mold
In many ways, Corina’s story is about learning to inhabit the space between categories. Between countries. Between corporate strategy and human psychology. Between performance metrics and lived experience.
What once felt like not fitting the mold has become central to her perspective. She understands what it means to navigate systems that were not designed with everyone in mind. She understands how identity shapes opportunity and perception. She understands that leadership, when done well, creates room rather than constriction.
Her work today is an extension of that understanding. It seeks to bridge gaps between expectation and reality, between ambition and sustainability, between organizational goals and individual dignity.
There is a steadiness to her vision. It is not driven by noise or trend. It is rooted in observation, research, and lived experience. She has seen what high performance environments demand. She has felt their pressure. And she has chosen to dedicate her next chapter to ensuring that performance and humanity no longer stand in opposition.
In the end, Corina Taban’s journey is less about titles and more about alignment. It is about staying curious enough to pivot, courageous enough to step forward before feeling ready, and reflective enough to ask deeper questions about the systems we build.
Leadership, in her world, is not a position. It is a responsibility to shape environments where people can excel without losing themselves.
For More Features
Be Featured in The Real Edit!
Every story has the power to shape how we see innovation, leadership, and purpose. If you’re a founder, creator, executive, or changemaker with a journey worth telling , we’d be honored to help you share it.
To inquire about being featured:
Email us at: info@realedit.site
Follow The Real Edit
No Comments