Auditorium Theatre 2018-19 Issue 2 Pink Boots

PROFILE JANUARY 24, 2019 | PINK BOOTS AND A MACHETE | 3 ABOUT DR. MIREYA MAYOR A scientist, explorer, wildlife correspondent, anthropologist, author, and inspirational speaker, Dr. Mireya Mayor , who earned her PhD in anthropology, has reported on wildlife and habitat issues to worldwide audiences for more than a decade. A former NFL cheerleader for the Miami Dolphins, Mayor grew up in a big city. As the only daughter of Cuban immigrants, she couldn’t join the Girl Scouts as a little girl because her family thought it was too dangerous. In spite of this, she went on to become the first female wildlife correspondent for the Ultimate Explorer series on National Geographic Television, and has spent more than 15 years exploring some of the wildest and most remote places on earth, often armed with little more than a backpack, notebooks, and hiking boots. Mayor has slept in remote jungles teeming with poisonous snakes, gone diving with great white sharks, been charged by gorillas, and chased by elephants — all in the course of just a few months! Mayor’s curiosity and love for animals started very early on as a child. Since she could crawl, Mayor had birds, fish, dogs, cats, parrots, rabbits, turtles, and a little chicken named Maggie. But it was at the University of Miami in 1996 that she realized that her passion for animals could become a career. In order to fulfill a science credit, Mayor wanted to register for a woman’s biology course, but the class was full. After scrolling down the course list, she chose an anthropology course, not entirely knowing what the course would entail. That choice would forever change her life. Anthropology — particularly her professor’s stories of chasing monkeys in the wild — fascinated her. After learning of wild animals on the brink of extinction whose most basic behavior and habits were unknown, Mayor, then just 22 years old and already a Miami Dolphins cheerleader and a model, applied and received her first grant. She went on to spend that summer in the remote jungles of Guyana, one of the most unexplored regions of the world at that time. The following year, she journeyed to the wilds of Madagascar into areas so remote that she often found herself surrounded by local villagers who had never seen a foreigner before her arrival. Against all odds, and following in the footsteps of renowned scientists who had tried and failed, Mayor completed the first ever long-term and genetic studies of two of the most critically endangered primates in the world, Perrier’s sifaka and the Silky sifaka (both types of lemurs), and realized that this was her calling. Since then, Mayor has spent anywhere from three to 10 months at a time in Madagascar. In 1999, National Geographic was doing a story in Madagascar and asked Mayor to say a few words about the lemurs she studied. Impressed by her passion for the subject, down-to-earth delivery of scientific knowledge, and the distinct background of NFL cheerleader-turned-scientist, National Geographic offered Mayor the opportunity of a lifetime and her dream job: a staff wildlife correspondent position, complete with her own office. She has since gone underwater with six-foot Humboldt squids, scoped out gorillas in Central Africa, and worked with leopards in Namibia (just to name a few projects!). MARK THIESSEN