Mireya Mayor is a wildlife correspondent for the National Geographic. She is also a former cheerleader for the NFL's Miami Dolphins

Miami Dolphins

The Miami Dolphins are a Professional football team based in the Miami metropolitan area in Florida. The team is part of the Eastern Division of the American Football Conference in the National Football League...

. She was a Fulbright Scholar before earning a PhD in anthropology from Stony Brook University in New York.

Mayor was one of the explorers on the show Expedition Africa

Expedition Africa

Expedition Africa is an eight-part reality television miniseries that originally aired form to on History. Produced by Mark Burnett, the program follows four modern day explorers—a navigator, a wildlife expert, a survivalist, and a journalist—as they substantially retrace H.M. Stanley's famed...

. She currently is a two-time Emmy Award-nominated wildlife correspondent for the National Geographic Channel

National Geographic Channel

National Geographic Channel, also commercially abbreviated and trademarked as Nat Geo, is a subscription television channel that airs non-fiction television programs produced by the National Geographic Society. Like History and the Discovery Channel, the channel features documentaries with factual...

. Her work has provided her with extensive field experience studying primates, tarantulas, and other wild animals.

Mayor has been referred to as the "female Indiana Jones

Indiana Jones

Colonel Henry Walton "Indiana" Jones, Jr., Ph.D. is a fictional character and the protagonist of the Indiana Jones franchise. George Lucas and Steven Spielberg created the character in homage to the action heroes of 1930s film serials...

." She is the author of Pink Boots and a Machete: My Journey From NFL Cheerleader to National Geographic Explorer.