Dr. Mira Brancu on Agency, Systems Thinking, and Turning Insight into Action

A mutual mentor, Dr. John Reed, once told host Liz Sweigart: “You have to meet Mira.” Minutes into their first call, Liz and Dr. Mira Brancu were jumping from quantum physics to organizational power structures. A lasting friendship was born.

In this episode of Past the Profile, Mira (founder & CEO of Towerscope) retraces her journey from arriving in the United States from Romania as a young girl to psychologist, author, and architect of a new Leadership Academy for mid-level managers in resource-strapped sectors. She and Liz swap stories about mentorship seeds that sprout years later, the difference between resilience and resourcefulness, and why “having choice” is the ultimate form of power.

Highlights

• How escaping a communist dictatorship and learning English on playgrounds fueled Brancu’s scrappy, systems-level worldview.
• The “cockroach resilience” mindset she brings to writing, entrepreneurship, and social-impact work.
• How her next book, tentatively titled Enough Is (Never) Enough, tackles the knot of gender, leadership identity, and achievement culture.
• Lessons from prototyping the Towerscope Leadership Academy: blending community support with bite-size hard-skill content.
• A call for mid-career “organizational misfits,” women in STEM/healthcare/academia, and mission-aligned partners to co-create the next phase.