Fulbright Scholar Discusses Saint Mother Teresa’s Leadership Principles With Emmy Award-Winning Broadcaster

Ines Angeli Murzaku, Ph.D., professor of Religion, Department of Religion, director, Catholic Studies Program, and founding chair, Department of Catholic Studies, explored the timeless lessons of Saint Mother Teresa with Steve Adubato, author, speaker and Emmy Award-winning broadcaster of Lessons in Leadership, along with co-host Mary Gamba. The episode can be viewed here. 

“I’ve written a book on Mother Teresa, Saint of the Peripheries, and currently I’m writing another book on Mother Teresa and her revolutions of Prayer, Suffering, Poverty, Service and Conscience,” said Murzaku. “There is a lot of leadership in Mother Teresa, in this diminutive woman, who has founded this wonderful Missionaries of Charity, one of the most successful modern religious orders in the world.” 

Murzaku’s latest project sprang from an invitation she and Seton Hall colleagues received for the University to join the Microeconomics of Competitiveness (MOC) Affiliate Network, a group of more than 100 educational institutions around the world that teach and collaborate in the areas of competition and entrepreneurship. The MOC network is part of the Institute for Strategy and Competitiveness, a nonprofit research and education organization based at Harvard Business School and founded by academic and business theorist Harvard Professor Michael Porter. Its members teach following Professor Porter's MOC curriculum, which explores the determinants of competitiveness and successful economic development viewed from a bottom-up, microeconomic perspective.

“I am a professor of historical theology, and I said, ‘Why on earth am I here?’ But my colleagues who invited us to be a part of this network explained we need the humanities [in MOC], we need the Catholic social teaching, although the people mostly come from the business world,” explained Murzaku. 

Murzaku, Adubato and Gamba reflected on how Murzaku’s fascination with this subject is rooted in the example of Mother Teresa, who founded the modern religious order of the Missionaries of Charity in the 1950s, which now has blossomed to 5,000 sisters in 139 countries in the world.  

Mother Teresa got the example, from Jesus himself. What I call ‘MOTHERS’ is her framework of key leadership principles. M stands for mission focused. She was so mission focused and purpose driven. Mother Teresa knew what she wanted. She had a mission; she had a vision, and she got things done. O stands for others. Mother Teresa lived the principle through her mission, through her apostolate, to serve others. So O stands for others, servant leadership. What does this mean? If we unpack Mother Teresa, there you have the servant and the leader. They are combined together. 

T is testify by example; lead by example; lead by integrity. Walk the talk as business people say. H stands for humanity but also humility because this is the focus of Mother Teresa. Her focus is on people, and she did that in a very humble way. E is for evolve, adapt. She was a maestro, innovative, always adapting to the new situation and also testing the ground. She sent her nuns to serve the alcoholics, to serve the Roma people. R stands for resolute perseverance. She had an idea. She got it done to the end. And S of course for sacred, human dignity.

Murzaku’s next book will be a comparative study building upon both Professor Porter’s determinates of competitiveness as well as that of Mother Teresa’s leadership principles co-authored with Professor José Pablo Nuño de la Parra, Universidad Popular Autónoma del Estado de Puebla, México. The upcoming study will be a “Theology of Competitiveness: Where Competitiveness meets Compassion” affirming human dignity, promoting the common good, and respecting creation. Murzaku believes that by adopting a “shared value” approach, Porter’s theories can be infused with a human-centric, ethical dimension, inspired by Mother Teresa’s unconditional respect for each human being.  Consequently, businesses and regional planners, aware of Catholic Social Teaching and Mother Teresa’s witness, could design clusters that prioritize the poor, promote workers’ dignity, and consciously uplift entire communities, proving that competitiveness need not exclude compassion.

“If you read how Mother Teresa tailored her approach, for example, when she sent her sisters to Russia or when she sent them to Calabria to serve the Roma population, she tested the ground. She went ‘in situ’ directly to the places and interviewed people and she built on whatever was there,” explained Murzaku. “Mother Teresa’s principles, that people can bring home, is this message that what you do, I don’t do; I cannot do. So, let’s do something beautiful together.”

Murzaku, Adubato and Gamba reflected on how their interview taping for the June 14 and 15 broadcast took place remotely as Murzaku was pursuing her Fulbright Professorship at Babeș-Bolyai University in Cluj-Nopoca, Romania, at the start of Easter Holy Week in April. Her project, “Transitional Justice and Dialogue as Means to Build Peace in Post-communist Romania," draws on her recent research in interreligious and intercultural dialogue to bring to light new data regarding the application of transitional justice from communism to post-communism and understanding of the experiences of those of minority religions in a country whose majority population is of the Eastern Orthodox faith. The significance of that research and teaching on transitional justice and her lived experience participating in peace-building dialogue across cultures and religions positions was extremely relevant at this time. 

Murzaku concluded, saying, “It is a very special year because we are celebrating Easter together. And this university is in Romania, an Orthodox country. We are here together, the Orthodox people and the Roman Catholics and also the Greek Catholics and at the same time, Protestants.”  

Listen to the episode of Steve Adubato’s Lessons in Leadership with Ines Angeli Murzaku.

To learn more about, Ines Angeli Murzaku’s Fulbright project, visit here. 

Categories: Faith and Service, Research