“In order to be a well-rounded student, one needs to not just be academically focused but also to be able to socialize well and learn from the experience of being in a multicultural university.” These are the words of Milagros Evans Malaya – a graduate of the LL.M. in International Business Law program at CEU who earned the Outstanding Academic Achievement Award for the Department of Legal Studies in 2016.
Miles, as she is known by her friends, works for Baker McKenzie, a leading international law firm with 77 offices worldwide. She is the Global Knowledge Lawyer for the firm’s Compliance & Investigations Group. She is responsible for the management and implementation of legal content projects and training and knowledge initiatives.
She believes that her CEU experience was life changing as it defined her professional paths. “After graduating from CEU, so many career options were opened to me that were not available before. I got job offers from international organizations as well as international law firms,” she says.
She mentions that all her courses were engaging but she fondly remembers Professor Tibor Tajti’s classes as they were extremely interactive, which gave her the opportunity to learn from her classmates’ experience. “My class was composed of 19 wonderful individuals from 16 different countries, and forming lifelong friendships with them and other students allowed me to maximize my CEU experience,” says Miles. Her thesis, under the guidance of Professor Csilla Kollonay-Lehoczky, was on employment law -- specifically a comparative analysis of the free movement of skilled labor in the EU and the ASEAN region. “I always had a passion for Employment law as in my former firm, I was dubbed the ‘Labor Queen’. There are still aspects of labor law in my current work. However, it has broadened . Moreover, I am currently experiencing the free movement of skilled employment: having been born, raised and educated in the Philippines, I have also worked in our London office, and am currently working in our Amsterdam office,” Miles says.
She advises current and prospective students to make the most of the CEU experience by appropriately allocating their time, cultivating relationships and traveling. “Learning extends outside of the classroom. During my year at CEU, I was able to visit 16 different countries [and this gave me an opportunity] to discover not only the destination but… to know more about myself,” says Miles.