Most people tiptoe around thoughts of the unknown, but Romanian-born Sorin Mihailovici doesn’t have such fears. In fact, the 37-year-old trailblazer has made a career out of soaring feet first into all things foreign — including his move to Canada.
Mihailovici first travelled to Canada in 2001 as a reporter covering the world track and field championship in Edmonton, Alberta. It’s now 13 years later, and he admits he never expected to call Canada his adoptive home, much less become a well-recognized producer, tech entrepreneur and television personality.
“I’ve seen 40 countries and Canada is by far the best; something about it just made me want to stay,” Mihailovici says.
And he’s been busy ever since. Based in Edmonton, the internationally trained journalist began working with multicultural station OMNI Television, where he works as a producer, community relations manager and program development co-ordinator. The entrepreneur also developed Scam Detector, an online and mobile app that exposes more than 750 of the world’s most notorious scams.
As if he were not busy enough, the multi-talented Mihailovici came up with an idea for his own TV show/philanthropic enterprise. Called Travel by Dart, it features him and a friend throwing a dart and doing charity work in whatever country it lands on.
“I knew 13 years ago that there will be a day when I’ll be extremely happy with who I am and what I do, and finally that day is here,” Mihailovici says.
He notes, however, that success wasn’t easily attainable.
Coming to Canada as an international reporter, Mihailovici had interviewed icons like Muhammad Ali and Rolling Stones guitarist Ronnie Wood and expected to immediately pick up where he left off. But his foray into Canadian journalism wasn’t as smooth as he hoped for it to be.
“I went to every single news station in town and nobody would hire me,” he says. “English wasn’t my first language and … I got slapped several times and told that I don’t have Canadian experience.”
Mihailovici was disappointed that he wasn’t able to practise what he loved for his first three years in Canada. Fortunately, with the strong support of Edmonton’s Romanian community, he slowly got back up on his feet.
“I really wanted to build myself again here and so I started from the beginning and went back to school,” he says.
In 2005, Mihailovici began the three-year major in motion image and film and television degree at Grant MacEwan University. By the time he graduated in 2008, he was immediately hired by OMNI Television.
His patience and hard work were paying off, and one good thing led to another, leading Mihailovici to be able to literally live out his dreams.
“[In 2011], my best friend Matt [Cook] asked me what my ideal life looked like and I said, ‘I wish that one morning I could wake up with my wife and kids, ask them where shall we go that weekend, then throw a dart at a map and go there,’” he says.
Two days later, Cook called him asking whether he’d like to do such a trip now instead of waiting until they’re financially independent. A couple of hours later, the men found themselves leaving their local Walmart with a set of darts and a world map. They vowed to visit the place the dart landed on whether it was deathly cold or plagued with war. They recorded the dart throw to keep themselves accountable — and the soon-to-be televised series Travel by Dart was launched.
After 22 unsuccessful tries, the dart finally stuck to the Norwegian archipelago of Svalbard.
Located a few degrees south of the North Pole, Svalbard’s average summer temperature is six degrees Celsius and drops to around minus 30 degrees Celsius with wind chill in the winter. Polar bears outnumber humans 3,000 to 2,700 in the Norwegian islands. And, according to their research, they discovered that 75 per cent of the region’s polar bear population will die in the next 50 years due to global warming and the melting of their habitat.
That information changed their mandate from personal freedom to philanthropy. Mihailovici and Cook decided to turn the trip into more than just a vacation and decided to find ways to address one of Svalbard’s most pressing problems: the plight of the polar bears.
“I grew up in a poor country in Romania and I struggled a lot when I saw other kids playing with their toy cars,” Mihailovici says. “I didn’t have much before and I decided that maybe it was time for me to give back.”
With the help of sponsors, Mihailovici’s team launched their charitable company, Polar Faith, and travelled to Svalbard.
In the dead of winter, when the Svalbard sky was pitch-black 24/7, both men worked hard to raise funds for the World Wildlife Fund and simultaneously raise awareness for the endangered polar bear cause.
“This was supposed to be a vacation for two guys in December … but we decided to stay there and help and that was probably the best thing that could have happened to Travel by Dart,” Mihailovici explains.
Since then, Travel by Dart has turned into a global phenomenon. Last year, Mihailovici and Cook threw another dart, which landed on Russia. They released the second episode of the series mid-October, which follows them in a cross-country tour of Russia where they expose mafia violence and fight youth homelessness.
They’re planning to visit their third dart location — Sierra Leone — between Christmas and New Year.
When he’s not darting in and out countries, Mihailovici also busies himself with his online and mobile app Scam Detector, which he developed in 2011. The idea for the app originated from Mihailovici’s award-winning short film The 419: The Nigerian Scam, a reenactment of how one of his friends lost $30,000 to the advance-fee fraud. The film was well-received online views with users commenting that there should be a way to expose other fraudulent schemes. Mihailovici created the app and within a month of launching, it became the no. 1 app in iTunes Canada’s lifestyle category. He now employs a team of eight people and has more than two million users.
“I didn’t expect it to grow this much, but it’s become a huge part of me now,” he says.
Mihailovici still can’t believe the success he’s enjoyed. He credits his achievements to jumping into unfamiliar situations and going out of his comfort zone.
“If you’re not challenged, then you don’t develop and, as immigrants, it’s important that we push ourselves to grow.”
Originally published by Canadian Immigrant magazine
