Cătălin Dragoș Teniță (; born 4 October 1977,ătălinTeniță in Bucharest, Romania) is a Romanian politician serving as a member of the Romanian Parliament, Chamber of Deputies since December 2020. Before December 2020 he was a digital entrepreneur and civic activist. He was a founder of Treeworks, Zelist Monitor and Geeks for Democracy, a specialist in online communication and digital communities, and he was an Eisenhower Fellow 2020.
Political activity
Cătălin Teniță is a member of the Romanian Parliament (Chamber of Deputies), being elected in the Bucharest electoral district, on the USR PLUS list in December 2020. He is Vice Leader of the USR PLUS parliamentary group in the Chamber of Deputies.
Committee assignments
Committee for Human Rights, National Minorities and Cults (Vice-chair) Chair Subcommittee for the Civic Society (Chair) Committee for Arts, Culture, and Media UNESCO Committee
Early life
In 1996 he graduated from the . In 2000 he graduated from the Law School of the University of Bucharest.
Between 1995 and 1997 he was co-editor and translator at the Jurnalul SF, publishing over 100 materials (translations of short stories and novellas, as well as original book reviews), and a translator for various Romanian publishing houses.
In the spring of 2002, together with two high school classmates, he founded TreeWorks – an I.T. company with its own programming and product development activities and has been the company's managing partner until the election as Romanian MP.
Civic involvement
In the summer of 2016, he co-founded a civic affinity group called Geeks for Democracy, which became a non-profit association with legal personality in 2018. The purpose of this entity is to use the resources and know-how in the area of creative industries (I.T., communication, design) for civic actions.
Over time, Geeks for Democracy has carried out, either in its own name or in coalitions with other associations and groups, civic actions such as:
Every Vote Matters is the platform for recruiting and training the voting observers (in cooperation with ExpertForum, Funky Citizens, CIVICA Iasi, Ghepart, Electoral Observatory) The Fund for Democracy – a donor community for civic startups and investigative journalism Crowdfunded national opinion polls on political opinions on current issues (February 2017 – OUG 13/2017, January 2018 – socio-economic/political correlations, December 2018 – opinion Romanians on pardoning/amnesty for corruption offenses in relation to those of common law) Our money – monitoring the public procurement in SEAP / SICAP AtlasElectoral.eu – analysis of election results and presence The Memorial of the Decree – a cross-media product of oral history type of the harmful consequences of Decree no. 770 of 1966 which established ruthless pronatalist policies Creative actions to support the protests caused by the attacks on justice during 2017-2019, both offline (Victoriei Square ) and online (statulparalel.ro, mitingucujapca.ro) New People in Politics – A Citizen Legislative Initiative to Reform Electoral Legislation to Simplify the Access of Competent Citizens in Politics Actions of public commemoration of the heroes of the Romanian Revolution on its 29th anniversary, respectively 30th anniversary (2019) Shopping at Your Door – an initiative to respond to the needs of the elderly or other risk categories in the COVID-19 crisis (a crowdsourced call-center and teams of volunteers for home delivery of food and medicine, as well as interventions of the mobile food bank in disadvantaged or quarantined communities).
In 2018 he participated in the course "Current U.S. Social, Political, and Economic Issues for Young European Leaders II", organized by the United States Department of State under the International Visitor Leadership Program.
In the fall of 2019 he was selected by Eisenhower Fellowships, Philadelphia as a Global Fellow 2020.