Reunification
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Meet Erika Vela
February 17, 2012
With a resume of a person twice her age, second-year law student Erika Vela ’13 said she explored many options before pursuing a law degree. She’s been an office manager at the Manhattan and Newark offices of DHR International, a top five global executive search firm; a legal secretary at the Office of Donald Werner in New Jersey; an intern at JP Morgan Chase Mortgage; the business manager at the private consulting firm Abruzzo Associates; a research assistant at Rutgers Business School; a grant writer at Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey; and the founder and president of Evela LLC, her own writing, editing, and design company.
“Having done work in various industries and knowing that advocacy is something that I’ve been strong in and drawn toward, I found law school was the right path for me. I waited three years after college because I wanted to make sure that it was absolutely what I wanted to do, so I tried different things and all roads led back to law school,” Vela said.
The evolution of Evela LLC
Her work experiences at DHR International and Abruzzo Associates led Vela to form her own writing, editing and design company. “I saw that there was a need for those kinds of services at a much more local level, so I taught myself HTML to design websites. I found out how to file for an LLC, and I called the company Evela – which is a nickname given to me by people who have influenced me throughout my life,” Vela said.
Jobs, studies, independent research, teaching, and curiosity have taken her to numerous countries, including Costa Rica, Panama, Peru, Mexico, Italy, Antigua, and Brazil. Because of her varied experiences, international travels and fluency in Spanish, English, and Portuguese, Vela has a vast network of connections around the world which have helped open doors for her.
“I started marketing myself through my networks and had people asking me for my services even before I had established myself. I had been doing this kind of work as a hobby, until I realized I could make a living out of it. Eventually I hired a few associates. Within a few months, I quit my full-time corporate job and was supporting myself fully through my own business. I did that for a few months while I took my LSATs and applied to law schools. I was still doing it part-time during my first year of law school because it paid for my rent and food,” she said.
A love of languages
Vela majored in Women’s and Gender Studies with a double minor in Latin American Studies and Psychology at Rutgers. She said that her friends and family questioned her choice of major wondering what she could do with her degree. “It was the only major I really cared about. I wasn’t into the sciences, math or engineering. Women’s Studies was something that actually challenged my viewpoints and the things I learned as I was traveling the world. It’s a great background for law school because it is a blend of social studies, history, and politics. The way I read my cases sometimes gets informed by my Women’s Studies background, giving me a completely different perspective than my peers.”
Vela’s work at Penn State Law this semester includes her coursework and positions as a teacher’s assistant for Advanced Legal Writing and U.S. Common Law Methods; a federal judicial intern at the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Pennsylvania with The Honorable William “Skip” Arbuckle, III; a part-time student associate at The Mazza Law Group, P.C.; associate editor in the Penn State Journal of Law and International Affairs; vice president of the Latino/a Law Students Association; and member of the Penn State Law Student Bar Association Diversity Committee. In addition, she still does some work at Evela LLC.
The road ahead
This summer, Vela will be at the Rio de Janeiro, Brazil office of Veirano Advogados, a top international law firm in Brazil and Latin America, with correspondent firms in over ninety countries.
“I need to be in an environment with a global lens, where I can travel, and where I can use my languages. Also, whatever I do must involve intensive writing. Still, I hope to remain flexible and creative so I do not miss any opportunities.”
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