Jess
Cramp
Born 1979
Marine biologist who
helped create one of
the world’s largest
shark sanctuariesIn the Cook Islands,
where she lives, Jess
Cramp is often the only
woman aboard when
she does research
from commercial fish-
ing boats. As a marine
biologist focused on
sharks, earning the
respect of the crew is
crucial to her scientific
success. Long before
Cramp made it onto a
boat, she struggled to
find female mentors in
the competitive field.
She helped create one
of the world’s largest
shark sanctuaries, in
the South Pacific, but
says she still hears the
words “You don’t look
like a scientist” far too
often. “We can’t answer
the world’s toughest
questions with the sta-
tus quo,” Cramp says.“Often I show up to places, and
people don’t believe me when I say
I’m Dr. Wynn-Grant,” says Rae Wynn-
Grant, who is the only African-American
large-carnivore ecologist with a Ph.D.
in the United States.
Nature programs on TV were her
gateway into conservation, even
though the hosts were “very different
from me—often older, white, British
or Australian men who seemed to have
grown up in the outdoors.” Wynn-Grant
didn’t go on her first hike until age 20,
but since then she has honed her out-
door survival skills in fieldwork around
the world. She studies human-carnivore
conflict with grizzly bears in Yellow-
stone National Park, lions in Kenya
and Tanzania, and black bears in the
American Great Basin. She does it, she
says, to build a world that’s “thriving,
healthy, and balanced.”RAE WYNN-GRANT
Born 1985
Ecologist studying conflict be-
tween people and large carnivoresBefore becoming the
first Sri Lankan Ph.D.
marine mammal biolo-
gist, Asha de Vos imag-
ined “seeing things no
one else would ever
see and going where
no one else would ever
go.” Years later that
dream put her on a
ship in the North IndianOcean, where she began
to study blue whales.
“As women, we have
to work harder than
men,” she says. “Work so
hard that people stop
seeing you for your
gender or background,
but instead they see
you for your capacity
to do what you do.”F^
or the first century of National Geographic, the few female explorers, photogra-
phers, and scientists in its pages were almost always white and American or
European. Today’s community of explorers and contributors is as diverse as the
places, people, and species they study. But even in 2020, many of them—Asha de
Vos, for example, the only Sri Lankan marine mammal biologist with a Ph.D.—are a rarity in
their chosen profession. Here are some of the explorers representing National Geographic and
clearing the path for another generation of adventurous women.Asha
de Vos
Born 1978
Pioneer of whale
research in the
North Indian OceanCLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT, THIS PAGE: ANDY MANN; TSALANI LASSITER; SPENCER LOWELL
134 NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC OPPOSITE PAGE: ELIZABETH DALZIEL; JACKIE FAHERTY; IAN BALAM; THEODORA RICHTER