Her Story
About Mirela
I have been in my field for 30 years, living a life with many hats across two continents. Until age 44, I was in Romania where I was one of the top journalists of the country. I started as a literary critic during my master's degree when my professors encouraged me to write literary criticism. At 23, I had my literary criticism column. Being a literary critic means being the voice of the ones that have no voice. I started looking around, not only about books, but at people, seeing injustice and what was happening in communist Romania. I always was outspoken and talked against what was happening in Romania - I was almost jailed for this. In my secret file after the revolution, it was written 'a dangerous person having the power to influence the people.' When the communist nomenclature took over Romania post-revolution, they wanted to kill my son, so I ran away to America to find freedom. In America, I went back to school and got another master's degree. I became tenured faculty of New York University School of Law, where I transformed international law research into something unknown before. I learned HTML codes by heart and transformed international law research in the United States and in the world, doing something which was unthinkable before. I am now in the Hall of Fame of international law researchers. I am the one that innovated and created the first open source legal information platform, New York University Hauser Globalex, which I am now honorary editor-in-chief of. When I went to teach in third world countries and saw they had no books in their libraries, I said they need access to real legal information. I trained students and developed this huge network of free-of-charge legal information, which was taken over by Australia as the Legal Information Network. After I retired, I went back to writing Romanian literary criticism. I have two monthly columns in two major literary journals in Romania, writing about poetry, novels, criticism, and even law. I wake up at 6 or 5 in the morning for 50 years, writing and reading and doing everything. I am a happy and content woman because I did in my life what I accomplished with God's help.
Her Interview
Ten minutes with Mirela
01What do you attribute your success to?
Anything I did, it was because God wanted me to do it. Each of us has a task to accomplish, and God will help us if we go on the path that he wanted us to go. It's not only talent, it's about work, because without work, talent is nothing. Work and education is what counts. I wake up at 6 or 5 in the morning for 50 years, writing and reading and doing everything. It doesn't matter how many obstacles you get in your life - every obstacle is an opportunity coming to you, because you have to go over it. Every time you do, you become stronger and stronger and more powerful. Every barrier in your life, every punch in your head - when someone punches you in your back to kill you, to destroy you, actually they push you ahead. When someone punches you in your back with a bat, take it as someone that pushes you forward to doing it better. When you are true to yourself, you are untouchable. Even those people that were after me and hated me and wanted to jail me, they admired my courage.
02What advice would you give to young women entering your industry?
I would say that you cannot be an accomplished woman if you are not a mother. Being a woman, a mother, is completely different as being a maiden, or a woman without children. You cannot understand the world, the metaphysical dimensions of all of us, if you don't have a child. The drive of my life was my son.
03What are the biggest challenges or opportunities in your field right now?
My biggest challenge is I don't know exactly if I have to write my memoir. Everybody asks me to write a memoir, but I don't want to brag about my life.
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