Maria was born and raised in Athens. Currently she studies law at the University of Athens, a fit choice considering that she has been described as “the devil’s advocate”. Maria is passionate about human rights, gender equality and international relations, something she gained through participating in Model United Nations Conferences. She was first introduced in the world of MUN when she was in the 10th grade and loved it so much that she dreams of working for the real UN someday. She has 4 true loves in her life: debate, and classical music, books and travelling. Her secondary education revolved around debating, something that could also be said for her university years as well. If she is not debating herself, she is coaching at schools and universities or judging in debating tournaments. She has been playing the piano ever since she can remember herself and is always complaining about not having enough space for the books she hasn’t even bought yet. One of her dreams is to travel the world and change it one destination at a time. Her motoes in life are “carpe diem” and “be the change you want to see in the world”.

A memory I hold dear from last year’s RhodesMRC is the rush of finishing the working paper on time. Three of the delegates had undertaken the task of editing and finalizing the committee’s ideas and it seemed to be never-ending. While we tried to merge, rephrase and restructure the hundreds of clauses on the document, delegates continued sending more and more, making it even more difficult to meet the deadline for the submission of the final draft. Skipping coffee breaks and reducing lunch breaks to the bare minimum became our routine. Our keyboards nearly caught fire, but we managed to have it ready on time. The sadness hit us though when we received the draft document, corrected by the Secretariat, and saw how much of our work was scrapped off… Of course, once the conference was over, we were all laughing about it while drinking some well-deserved wine.