Don't invest unless you're prepared to lose all the money you invest. This is a high-risk investment and you are unlikely to be protected if something goes wrong. Take 2 mins to learn more.
The newspaper job posting didn't lead with salary or benefits. Instead, it talked about being a movement for women's empowerment. "What really triggered my curiosity was the fact that the announcement was not about the job description, but about the purpose of the company," Angela Cretu recalls.
Twenty-five years later, that curiosity-driven decision would culminate in her leading one of the most dramatic corporate transformations in recent history—saving a global beauty empire and 5 million sales representatives during a pandemic while finding £170 million in efficiencies from their own value chain.
Today, as an angel investor with Angel Academe, Angela applies the same purpose-first philosophy, asking founders: "Why does the world need their business?"
Listen to our latest Angel Insights podcast below:
Angela initially planned to spend "a few years" at Avon before moving on. She even looked at longtime employees and wondered why they would stay for 10 or 15 years. "I fell in love, and it ended up being 25 years of my life. Moving from a country to another, from one role to another, different business challenges."
Starting as a sales manager in 1999, she climbed through roles across Romania, the Middle East, Russia, and New York, eventually leading Central Europe as Group Vice President responsible for 19 countries. What she couldn't have imagined was how this diverse experience would prove crucial when Avon desperately needed someone who understood the engine room of the company.
By 2020, Avon was facing a perfect storm: ten years of year-on-year revenue decline, outdated technology, and a costly organisational structure that was suffocating innovation.
"I had exactly two weeks to select my executive team because all the executives were out the door with this transition." Angela calls them her "enabling team," deliberately reframing leadership as facilitation rather than command-and-control.
With no time for lengthy recruitment, she relied on 20 years of internal knowledge to identify people who would add value versus those who would just go through the motions.
Just two months later, the pandemic hit. "We had five million representatives all around the world connected and heavily dependent on these personal relationships... not being able to meet their customers was quite a shock."
Then something extraordinary happened. "They created WhatsApp shops. They created Facebook Live shopping sessions. Even before we had the systemic innovation, they have already been a step ahead of us."
This grassroots innovation taught Angela a lesson that would reshape her leadership philosophy: "Community spirit always prevails. If people are committed to something and they passionately believe in something, people will always find ways to reconnect."
The transformation required surgical precision. Angela delayered the organisation from 11 hierarchical levels to just four, shifting "from an egocentric hierarchical organisation to a network-based organisation."
They completely overhauled manufacturing, simplified product portfolios, and forged strategic alliances with top-tier technology providers. Without available off-the-shelf solutions, Avon became an early adopter of AI for demand forecasting and working capital optimisation.
"There was no stakeholder who wouldn't feel the pain of transformation, yet because of the magnitude of our dream... people were enthusiastic about doing something different."
The rebrand was comprehensive. Reimagined packaging, carbon-negative product formulas, and omnichannel access that attracted new generations of representatives. Under Angela's leadership, the company predicted for bankruptcy became sustainable and profitable once again.
Leading through existential crisis taught Angela something counterintuitive about resilience. "You turn pain into fuel. Once you kill ego, you discover the beauty of treating it like an experience and learning."
This philosophy – turning failures into curious exploration rather than defeat – fundamentally changed her approach to leadership. She realised that her role wasn't to be the hero of the transformation story, but rather to create conditions where others could innovate and thrive. "I learned that I can never succeed alone and it's never about me. My role is to be an enabler, a connector, and it's all about co-creating value."
The intensity was overwhelming. Constantly changing time zones from Brazil to the Philippines to London, always offering her best. But it crystallised her core philosophy about collective achievement. "Value can only be created as a collective, and that collective should be as diverse as possible. When I talk diversity, I don't just mean culture, race, or gender. I'm talking diversity of perspectives from young, very junior to senior, different backgrounds and so on."
After four years of successful transformation, Angela stepped down in January 2024, feeling "at my prime. I still have the energy and appetite and curiosity to do so many other things." She'd proven that established businesses can reinvent themselves when leaders focus on collective value creation rather than individual heroics.
Angela's corporate experience initially made evaluating startups challenging. She was accustomed to "very polished and complex financial scenarios" backed by armies of analysts. Learning to reframe expectations became crucial.
Now she focuses on "the power of their idea and their ability to execute." Unlike large corporations, where execution is assumed, with founders, she pays attention to subtle resilience signals.
She looks for founders who can handle pressure and feedback constructively. "If you see they lose their patience or disconnect with the mere challenge of one investor, you understand their resilience is really low. What do they do with the real challenges in the business?"
She learned this when a promising founder kept saying "this is an old file" during financial discussions, never sending updates. The final red flag came when the founder started texting during a heated investment debate. Despite a top-notch idea, the founder's attitude towards partnership made the decision clear.
At Angel Academe, Angela values the collaborative due diligence process. "We all come together with exactly the same mission and purpose, which is to find the biggest potential and support the founders to maximise their impact." The network has invested in over 50 female-founded startups since 2014, and through their Angel Academe EIS Fund, provides tax-efficient investment opportunities for those looking to support the next generation of female entrepreneurs.
Above all, Angela looks for genuine curiosity. "If there is no obvious curiosity, I would have a phobia about partnering with people who lack or have insufficient curiosity."
She particularly values female founders because "many women are natively wired to manage paradoxes and deal with uncertainty." But her ideal combines diverse perspectives: "It's when we have a healthy mix of gender and perspectives that we get optimal governance and the best decisions."
Angela sees massive potential in wellbeing, "a fragmented industry with fantastic potential for growth over the next decade." She envisions "higher demand and more sophisticated demand into wellbeing – not just devices, but supplementation, nutrition, health management, and immersive experiences."
With every investment across edutech, fintech, healthtech, and deep tech, she acquires new technical knowledge, revisiting chemistry lessons to understand polymers and physics to grasp sensor technology. She's deliberately "on demand" as an investor—available when founders need expertise, but not imposing when they don't.
Angela's journey from purpose-driven job seeker to transformational CEO to angel investor proves that curiosity-driven leadership creates value at any scale. Her Avon success—transforming a company predicted for bankruptcy into a profitable omnichannel business—demonstrated that established companies can reinvent themselves through collective value creation.
The transformation succeeded because she enabled five million representatives to innovate solutions. This distributed problem-solving approach now influences how she evaluates startup teams and their collective intelligence.
When asked about her ten year angel investing vision, Angela's answer reflects the same purpose-driven thinking that attracted her to that first newspaper advert: "Impact. That the founders I supported would be happy with the impact they've created, the value they've created."
For founders seeking Angela's investment: demonstrate why the world needs your business, maintain curiosity through setbacks, and prove you can turn challenges into fuel. Most importantly, show you understand leadership isn't about being the hero—it's about enabling collective value creation.
In a world where female founders receive only 3% of venture capital funding, Angela's approach through Angel Academy continues the original mission that attracted her to Avon: empowering women to create meaningful change.
Angela Cretu is an angel investor with Angel Academy, Senior Advisor for the Beauty Industry, and Board Director at API. She served as Global CEO of Avon International from 2020 to 2024. Connect with her on LinkedIn where she regularly shares insights about transformation, leadership, and angel investing.
