Mireille Murad may be the only owner and operator of a modeling agency that Georgia Tech has ever produced.
“It’s like being a mommy to everybody and really impacting their lives. Some of the girls call me Coach,” says the 26-year-old Murad of her role at Atlanta-based Element Model Management.
“Discovered at the mall,” Murad, Psy 07, did some modeling while attending Chattahoochee High School and was encouraged by her agent to walk the runways of Milan.
“I knew right off the bat that my parents wouldn’t let me. And swimming was a big deal to me. I wanted to swim in college. If you model overseas, you’re there for one to three months, and I’d miss one to three months of my training. It was bittersweet, I guess,” says Murad over the French toast special at Junior’s Grill.
She followed her dad, Joseph Murad, MS AMath 76, MS EE 78, to Georgia Tech, where she was on the swimming team her freshman year.
“I almost made it an entire year as a distance freestyler,” Murad says. “I was bending over to pick up a pen I was using while studying for finals. Something just went out of whack on my back. It got to the point I couldn’t even climb into my bunk bed in the dorm. I couldn’t carry my backpack. I literally looked like a grandma walking around campus. It was that bad.”
She underwent testing and physical therapy. “‘Bottom line,’ doctors said, ‘you need to slow down on your training. It’s probably a combination of lactic acid buildup because of all the stress and overtraining.’”
Murad retired from swimming and began rebuilding her modeling portfolio.
“A photographer came from France, and my agent told me about it. I dropped 500 bucks on that shoot. You have to invest in this. You want to get the top-notch pictures. Once I started building my portfolio, I got signed again with an agency while I was in college,” she says. “Then random students around campus started asking me, ‘How do I get in the business?’ I would help these people out, but time is so valuable at Tech that I got to the point I started charging people. ‘You want my valuable knowledge? Let’s meet over coffee. I’ll give you a crash course.’”
She created the student group GT Mod Squad with friends Anees Mawani, Psy 08, and Vishwas Iyengar, PhD AE 07, and another from Georgia State. They organized a fashion show for Culture Week on campus and staged auditions.
“We had the boom box playing techno. We made them do cold walks. We had a rating card. On a scale of one to five, rate their face, rate their skin, rate how they dress, rate their personality. It was as fun as heck,” she says.
After graduation, Murad worked for a time as an Atlanta clothing designer’s executive director before visiting France with her parents.
“I came back after recentering myself and said, ‘You know what? It’s time to start
Element Model Management [ElementModelMgmt.com],’” Murad says.
The agency’s name comes from the sci-fi movie The Fifth Element.
“I guess it’s true,” she says. “Once you go to Georgia Tech, you get into science fiction movies. I just love the supermodel and the lead actress in The Fifth Element, Milla Jovovich, with the orange hair. That woman just exemplifies
power.”
She set up shop in February 2008. She now has about 50 models — men, women and children — on her roster and another 50 or so “in development.” Murad says she used her psychology training to develop motivational materials to transform the wannabe models into moneymakers.
“‘Hey, let’s whip you into shape. Let’s get a timeline, set evaluations. Here’s a map of exactly what you need to fix with your body and the types of training you need.’ I tell them, ‘This is a win-win situation,’” Murad says. “Their homework might be, ‘Stop wearing lip liner. You’ve got killer lips. You don’t need to wear lip liner ’cause it looks like white trash,’” she says. “I think that’s what sets our agency apart from others. You get the coaching. I eat, breathe and sleep this business, and, quite frankly, you need that coaching to be successful. That’s something I didn’t get as a model.”
Murad’s stable of models includes Georgia Tech students Jessica Hunt, Katee Lee and Kimberly Laughlin and alumna Stephanie Mma, MS AE 07.
Murad returned to Tech last year to teach an Options class. The turnout for the modeling and acting course was not stellar.
“I was bummed out. It was awkward teaching such a small class. I wasn’t doing it because I need to make money. I want to give back to Georgia Tech. I think self-improvement is huge,” she says. “How could you not like this?”
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