In 1982, Lois Mitte Roddenberry founded Children's Discovery Center, a business that grew into a successful premier early care and education provider in our region and beyond.

She's an educational icon and is committed to excellence, innovation and being distinctive in the world of childhood education.

Lois Roseberry.

Welcome to Business Live 360.

It's so great to have you here.

Lois Roseberry: Thanks, Kristi.

Kristi: Lois, you have had an extensive background in early childhood education and of course, a love of children.

So we really want to know about those early days as you were thinking about Children's Discovery Cente and how you really got started?

Lois Roseberry: Well, as you said, Kristi, it was the year 1982.

Interest rates were 18 to 21%.

My husband was unemployed.

My parents were making our house payments.

My daughter was on free school lunches, and on top of that, I was eight months pregnant with my third child.

Kristi: Oh my goodness.

Lois Roseberry: Certainly not a good time to start a business and expect to succeed, but I couldn't think of a better job for this pregnant mom.

Kristi: And I really want to ask you two about female entrepreneurs.

When you first started, were there many?

And did you find that to b a benefit or maybe not so much.

Lois Roseberry: Well, because it's childcare, there were a lot of business leaders who were women.

But I was invited to join a women's business group.

But I turned it down.

Kristi: Because.

Lois Roseberry: Because I said I don't want to limit myself to women.

We have a lot to learn from men as well.

And I've taken that approach.

And really, men have supported me in ways I could have never imagined.

Kristi: I like that a lot.

Now you speak to business organizations often and you talk about three points to success.

I've heard these and I love them.

And please share with our listeners and our viewers what your three points to success are.

Lois Roseberry: Excellence is our mantra.

Innovation is our distinctive and faith is our foundation.

Kristi: That's incredible.

And something else.

Lois, too, is following the succes of Children's Discovery Center.

You became extensively involved in something called Missio International, which is a US based nonprofit partnering with Romania for abused and traumatized girls in something that is called the Deborah House.

How did you get involved in that cause and why?

Lois Roseberry: When 1995, I wa asked to give the commencement address at Eastern Nazarene College in the Boston area.

And at that time they told me about the program that they had started in a place called Sequoia, Romania, where their students had learned about the plight of the children in orphanages in Romania based on 202 Dateline or 60 minutes stories.

And they started this study abroad program where their students could go and model best practices there, in the hospitals and in the orphanages.

And they invited me to go.

And while I saw that, you know, the horribl conditions in those hospitals, I also was taken out to around my village.

And there I walked along a stream that was littered with cans and trash and learne that was their drinking supply.

I then went into one and say, where are my homes?

And I learned that one of the children had died there because the child was bitten by a rat.

And the student who took m said, if only I had a four wheel drive vehicl to navigate these muddy roads.

She said I know I can make a difference.

I could take seeds and I could help them plant a garden, and I could improve their nutrition, and I could help them in so many ways.

I bought that.

And knew I had to keep coming back.

But my church in this area was also supporting a mission in another part of Romania.

Close to the Hungarian border.

So I thought, well, when I'm over in Romania, I should go visit that.

And there I saw the center fo boys and it was called a NASA.

Brothers and their boys were homeless and and had been street boys and had been brought in to a residential facility and I said, why isn't there a program for girls like this?

I wrote the first check.

Through these years, there have been close to 200 girls who, as you mentioned earlier, have been sexually trafficked or have been abused, who became, it received the counseling and the hope and the healing through their time at the Deborah Center.

Kristi: We are so lucky.

On business life.

360 to have a young woman who went into Deborah House and was able to really change her life around who is with us today.

So let's bring her on and talk more with her.

Lois Roseberry: I'd love that.

Kristi And now from Timisoara, Romania, we are welcoming here to the set.

Doctor Morella really welcome.

Dr. Mihaly: Thank you.

Kristi: It's really nice to have you here.

And we were just talking about Deborah House and the incredible impact it has had on young women.

And you were in Deborah House.

Please tell us a little bit more about perhaps why you were there an how your experience was there.

Dr. Mihaly: I arrived at Deborah House in 2009.

Yes.

My childhood wasn't so happy.

My parents were struggling with alcohol addiction.

And things at home were going worse and worse.

I started to work at just 11 years old, and all the money I earned, my mother would take from me to take by herself, you know, for herself.

Cigarets and alcohol.

At the age of 13 years old, I was sexually abused by a neighbor.

I got a charge at the age of 13 with the help of the church.

And the pastor from there.

And they helped me, you know to arrive at the Deborah house.

Kristi: How was your experience once you arrived there?

Dr. Mihaly: There.

I found, you know, Joy and I found the, you know, the powe to pass through to the people, who came with Deborah House through the themes from the United States and with the help of the counselors and everything.

So it helped me to grow and to heal and to to be what I am today.

Kristi You have done some great things since being at Deborah House.

Tell us about your life now and what you have been doing since leaving Deborah House.

Dr. Mihaly: In 2013.

I started medical school.

It was challenging.

With the help of God and with the help of so many others behind me, I made it.

Now I' in my final year of residency.

Internal medicine.

Kristi: Congratulations.

Dr. Mihaly: Here I am.

Kristi: And, Lois, how does this make you feel?

Lois Rosenberry: When I see Mirella, If we can make a difference in one or in 100.

I know that is what God has called us to do.

You know, I think it's entrepreneurs, Kristi.

We have a role to give back and to make that difference.

And clearly, that gives me sense of satisfaction of knowing that we have made a difference, not only here with the local charities such as the YWCA, but also worldwide with children, that we are raising them up to a higher leve where they believe in themselves and they have a better career.

Kristi: And to Lois it has been remarkably inspiring to not only learn how you began Children's Discovery Center with the many challenges you faced, and then seeing how Deborah House has grown to support girl who needed refuge and healing.

Marella.

What a story of courage, o overcoming and now of fruition.

Thank you for sharin your transformative experience and your story of hop and realization of your dreams.

And thank you bot for being on business life.

360.