Mother and daughter help legal studies program

A mother and daughter team of Ukrainian background has been instrumental in the development of ELI's legal studies programs for Ukrainian professionals.

Olha N. M. Rybakoff (left) with her mother, Olha M. Rybakoff, met with Judge Bernard Balick at the Women in Law Annual Picnic

The daughter, Olha N. M. Rybakoff, director of consumer protection under Delaware Attorney General M. Jane Brady, first became involved with the legal program in 1995.

Chris Wolfe, ELI's legal studies coordinator, was seeking a Delaware lawyer who could speak Ukrainian and located her through the Ukrainian American Bar Association. Rybakoff, who has worked in Delaware as a lawyer since 1984, translated materials, interpreted lectures and taught classes in Ukrainian to Ukrainian lawyers and judges. She also traveled to Ukraine with Wolfe to interpret and assist with teaching.

Her mother, Olha M. Rybakoff, joined the program in 1997 as an instructor, interpretor and translator.

This past September, both mother and daughter traveled with Wolfe to Ukraine again for the Women in Leadership conference, where the younger Rybakoff presented a paper and both women served as translators.

The elder Rybakoff's journey to Delaware began during World War II, when her family was forced to escape Nazi occupation of Ukraine. After traveling through several countries, they found themselves in a displaced persons camp in Germany. The family came to the United States in 1950 and settled first in Newark, NJ.

After graduating with a degree in science in 1955, Rybakoff worked for an electronics company in New Jersey as chief supervisor of all chemical processes, where she met her husband, Dr. George Rybakoff, vice president of the company. Both husband and wife studied law at the Ukrainian Free University in Munich, Germany, earning their doctor of jurisprudence degrees in 1972.

The couple moved to Delaware in 1982, when Rybakoff's husband accepted a position as dean and acting vice president of Wilmington College and adjunct professor of management at the University of Delaware.

The younger Rybakoff, who was born in the United States, received her law degree from the William Mitcher School of Law in Minnesota in 1984.

For both mother and daughter, participation in ELI's legal studies program has been rewarding. Although the elder Rybakoff no longer has family in Ukraine and never returned to the country until two weeks after it became independent in 1991, she says she has welcomed the chance to make new Ukrainian friends through her work.

Her daughter is equally enthusiastic. "These programs present a unique and wonderful opportunity for exchange," she said, "on a personal and cultural level."

Return to Table of Contents