He continued to inspire Romania’s rising generations through the Youth Civic Action Platform (PACT), a new political party he founded to drive reform. At the same time, he rallied Romanians living abroad to help chart their country’s future by voting.
In Romania, Burduja became active in the pro-European National Liberal Party, with which PACT had merged, and was elected to parliament and appointed to several government roles. He focused on creating economic opportunities as the secretary of state in the Ministry of Public Finance, and later, as minister of research, innovation, and digitalization, he transformed the nation’s digital landscape by instituting online transactions for permits and other services, implementing a new governmental cloud that connected all public institutions, and helping to pass a cybersecurity law.
Today, as minister of energy, Burduja is confronting the effects of the war in Ukraine and Europe’s volatile energy landscape by diversifying energy sources, accelerating the green transition, and modernizing the national grid. He is also expanding energy access to Romania’s remote villages. “Many of us take for granted the fact that we can turn on the lights, have hot water and heat, and use the microwave,” says Burduja. “The truth, however, is that there [are] too many Romanians—especially those in rural areas—who do not have these fundamental services.”
His overarching goal is to create a better world for future generations of Romanians—a vision that crystalized at HKS, where he determined to “leave behind more than I took from the world.”
In a sense, his life has come full circle. Listening to protesters during the revolution, he was struck by a profound sense of optimism. “There was just so much hope when people were chanting freedom, ‘libertate, libertate.’ You can hear it all over again, that feeling that we could really do anything, be free in this country.” His life’s work is to make this happen.
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Photograph courtesy of Sebastian Burduja