Ana Ghiban was born in 1998 in Bucharest, Romania, where her parents worked in the textile industry. When she was nine, the family relocated to Delhi, where she attended an international American school. Three years later, the family moved to Dhaka, Bangladesh. A couple of years later, when she was 14, they moved to Colombo, Sri Lanka. At 16, the family made their final move within Asia, this time to Shanghai, China, where Ana graduated high school, before relocating independently to The Hague for her undergraduate studies. She chose a liberal arts degree with a focus on Global Challenges. Her decision was in part motivated by her desire for a globally-oriented English education, and also due to her experiences growing up in Asia. In 2020, she moved to Amsterdam to pursue a Master’s degree in International Development Studies. As part of her graduate thesis field work, she spent three months in rural Transylvania with a Dutch-American family, interviewing Romanians, Hungarians, and foreigner farmers living in the region.