ST ER NI ES MA KE TH EIR MA RK
THE MARVELOUS MIRELA MITAN
The Romanian-born biochemist and entrepreneur aims to declutter the cosmetics counter and disrupt the industry with her proprietary formulas
STERN BUSINESS FALL 2018
20
MIRELA MITAN (MBA ’14) WAS CONFIDENT when she applied to NYU Stern’s Executive MBA program that she would learn the entrepreneurial skills she needed to market a novel skin-care product she had developed in her laboratory. “I knew from day one what I wanted, I just didn’t have a clear vision of how to get there,” she said. Three years after Mitan graduated, one of the most exclusive retail stores in the world featured her MMXV Infinitude™ facial cream at its cosmetics counter on New York’s Fifth Avenue. Mitan’s story begins in Romania, where she was born in 1970 and lived until emigrating to the US at age 30. As was the case with most Romanians in that era, under the notorious dictator Nicolae Ceausescu, necessities like food, clothing, and electricity were hard to come by but education was virtually a national imperative, Mitan said, and by studying during the wee hours of the night, when industrial electricity usage dropped, she graduated from the University of Bucharest with a doctorate in biochemistry. “It was a tough, crazy time,” she recalled. At the time, Mitan dreamed of working in the cosmetics and pharmaceutical industry in Romania, and she earned an additional degree in pharmacy. Her thesis had focused on the interactions of enzymes with natural extracts, and while Mirela Mitan doing research under (MBA ’14) at the a government research launch of her grant, she was hired by skincare line, MMXV InfinitudeTM a supplier to produce
