Educator · Facilitator · Founder
Learning that grows from who we are, and from the world around us.
I'm Vlad Grigoras. I design experiential learning that helps young people and the adults who support them discover their inner nature, work with the nature around them, and build the human skills a changing world asks for.
About
From law to learning
- RoleOrganisation Development Lead, iEL
- FoundediEL · ELNN
- BasedRomania & southern Spain
- LanguagesEnglish · Română
I trained in law, in Romania and then in London. During my internships I kept noticing the same thing: brilliant people who didn't know how to communicate, how to relate, how to really listen to each other. Learning built on memorisation had taught them a lot of content and very little about being human together.
In 2013 I stepped away from a legal career to work on that gap. Through NLP, psychology and years of meditation and inner work, I came back to a question I first felt as a child, when I went with my mother to translate for volunteer doctors in a children's hospital in Romania: how do we treat each other, and how do we learn to do it better?
"Law can help. But the change I care about follows the law of nature, and of human nature."
Since then I've built Innovation Education Lab (iEL) and the European Lead by Nature Network (ELNN): a community of facilitators, youth workers and partner organisations across Europe who design learning that starts with direct experience and ends in real change.
The philosophy
Lead by Nature
Lead by Nature is about learning the inner strengths, qualities and nature of each person, while understanding the nature outside us and learning to work in collaboration with it. It is not an ecological framing only. It is a way of approaching learning, leadership and life that treats the person and their context as inseparable, and both as worth understanding deeply.
Who you are
What you carry, what your gifts are, how you navigate your own being. Self-awareness, presence and purpose, explored through profiling, reflection and embodied practice.
Where you are
The environments, communities, ecosystems and systems we live within. Learning in nature, in community and in regenerative spaces, so that what we learn serves the places we live.
How the work happens
Experience first
Participants live a skill before they study it: role play, theatre, fieldwork, real scenarios, then reflection.
Inside and outside
Classroom, forest, city, workplace, camp. Different settings teach different things.
Community holds it
People learn deeper when a community holds them. Community is the ground, not an add-on.
Know your profile
Validated tools to understand strengths and growth areas, and a learner-owned Skills Passport.
Mentoring & matching
Mentors for life navigation, and links to real opportunities: internships, projects, enterprise.
Where it's heading
Regenerative spaces
A farm and learning campus in Romania and southern Spain for camps, residencies, food and learning in nature.
A movement in education
Convening deans, futurologists and regenerative practitioners to design learning beyond incremental change.
A values network
Organisations across science, education, food and social enterprise who share truth, presence and service.
Work
Where Lead by Nature lives today
The philosophy runs through everything I build. These are the places where it becomes programmes, people and partnerships.
iEL
Human skills for young people and young adults, delivered through holistic, community-based, experiential learning: a Human Skills Academy, mentoring, profiling and research. Organised in ten self-managing circles using Sociocracy 3.0.
Visit innoedulab.eu →ELNN
A network of partner organisations across Europe co-creating Erasmus+ and European Solidarity Corps projects, training courses and youth exchanges for youth workers, facilitators and young people.
Partner with the network →YouthLink
An online and local community for young people across the partner countries, with monthly gatherings, mentoring and pathways to internships, micro-projects and entrepreneurship.
Get involved →The human skills we build
Our reference is the MIT J-WEL Human Skills Matrix: twenty-four durable skills validated across forty-one frameworks, grouped in four domains.
Thinking
Critical thinking, creativity, ethics, systems thinking, comfort with ambiguity, growth mindset.
Interacting
Communication, collaboration, empathy, negotiation, relationship curation.
Leading
Strategic vision, empowering others, project and performance management.
Managing ourselves
Self-awareness, accountability, adaptability, persistence, initiative, integrity.
Work together
Ways we can collaborate
Facilitation & training
Experiential trainings, youth exchanges and training courses on human skills, communication, leadership and regenerative practice, in nature or in the room.
Organisation development
Helping teams and NGOs move toward self-management with Sociocracy 3.0: domains, delegation, consent decision-making and governance that outlasts individuals.
EU partnerships
Co-designing Erasmus+, ESC and other European projects with organisations who take youth development and human skills seriously.
Partners & sponsors
For companies and foundations who want to invest in something that changes individual lives and is built to last, not another logo on a banner.
Journey
Programmes along the way
Before iEL and ELNN took their current shape, I led NLP certifications, leadership retreats and international seminars. A few of them:
Master Yourself
A complete experience for leaders, managers and entrepreneurs.
Winter Jam
A winter school for creative teenagers.
Design Insightful Innovation
Seminar on tools for visually impaired youth and young people with fewer opportunities.
Art of Changing: NLP Master Practitioner
Certification programme.
Art of Changing: NLP Practitioner
Certification programme.
A Story of Europe
Storytelling for migrant entrepreneurs.
Your Way Forward
NLP, social innovation and discovery.
Contact
Let's talk
Whether you're a partner organisation, a company looking to invest in young people, or someone curious about Lead by Nature, I'd be glad to hear from you.