EXPEDITION AFRICA

Explorer Bios

Pasquale Scaturro

Adventurer and geophysicist Pasquale Scaturro, one of the planet’s foremost expedition leaders, has been trekking to the farthest, most challenging reaches of the globe for over 25 years. He’s led three expeditions to Mt. Everest, including one in which Erik Weihenmayer became the first blind climber to reach the summit. Scaturro has also spearheaded multiple descents of major world-class rivers including the Bio Bio in Chile, the Omo and Zambezi in Africa and the first-ever descent of the Nile from its source high in the mountains of Ethiopia to the Mediterranean Sea, a distance of 3,260 miles. The historic 114-day expedition involved suicidal rapids, crocodile attacks, gunfire from bandits and arrests by unfriendly militias. It was featured in the blockbuster 2005 IMAX film Mystery of the Nile.

In addition to leading expeditions, Scaturro travels the world as an exploration geophysicist, working on oil and gas exploration and development projects in many of the most remote, dangerous, politically and technically treacherous areas on earth. Scaturro’s leadership and teamwork abilities, along with his logistical expertise, hard work and enormous commitment have enabled him to straddle the realms of outdoor exploration and corporate America unlike any other expedition leader.

Scaturro has appeared on the “Today” show, “NBC Nightly News,” A&E, ESPN, Turner Television, National Public Radio and MSNBC and has been featured in numerous publications, including The Los Angeles Times and The Denver Post, along with Time and National Geographic Adventure magazines. His motivational talks have inspired audiences throughout the United States and Europe and taught people to push the boundaries of what they believe is possible. Married at a young age, serving in the U.S. military and struggling to complete a degree in geophysics and raise three children at the same time, Scaturro learned what it meant to sacrifice and still strive to make his dreams materialize both in business and on the rivers and mountains of the world. Scaturro lives in Colorado.



Mireya Mayor

An explorer, wildlife correspondent, anthropologist and inspirational speaker, Dr. Mireya Mayor, a Ph.D. in anthropology, has reported on wildlife and habitat issues for worldwide audiences. A former NFL cheerleader for the Miami Dolphins, Mayor grew up in a big city and as a little girl wasn’t allowed to join the Girl Scouts because her family thought it was too dangerous. In spite of this, Dr. Mayor went on to become the first female wildlife correspondent for the "Ultimate Explorer" series on National Geographic Television, and has spent more than 10 years exploring some of the wildest and most remote places on earth, often armed with little more than a backpack, notebooks and hiking boots. She has slept in remote jungles teeming with poisonous snakes, gone diving with great white sharks, been charged by gorillas and chased by elephants.

For more than a decade, Mayor has dedicated her life to unlocking the mysteries of the natural world. She ventures into previously unexplored parts of the planet to study rare primates, working closely with indigenous people in the process. In 2000, Mayor discovered a new species of mouse lemur in Madagascar and eventually convinced the African island nation's leaders to declare the new species' habitat a national park.

In addition to being a two-time Emmy Award nominee for "Ultimate Explorer," Mayor was named an "Emerging Explorer" in 2007 by the National Geographic Society which selects rising talents who push the boundaries of adventure and global problem solving, inspiring people to care about the planet.

She’s gone underwater with a six-foot Humboldt squid, scoped out gorillas in Central Africa and visited a veterinarian’s haven for leopards in Namibia. Mayor says: "Television has the power to help people know and connect with these animals and habitats that are disappearing. We may be facing the largest mass extinction of our time, so awareness is crucial. If we don't act now it will be too late."

Mayor is a Fulbright scholar, National Science Foundation Fellow and published author with a Ph.D. in anthropology from Stony Brook University. She’s made numerous appearances on the “Today” show, MSNBC and CNN and has been profiled in People, Marie Claire, Latina, National Geographic Adventure and Elle magazines. Mayor divides her time between research in the rainforests of Madagascar, lecturing at schools and universities and traveling the world as a wildlife correspondent.



Benedict Allen

Called a “cat who’s used up six of his nine lives,” explorer, author and filmmaker Benedict Allen has been abandoned and left to die--twice--in the Amazon, been pursued by one of Columbian drug kingpin Pablo Escobar’s hit men, stitched up his own chest wound with a boot-mending kit and been forced to eat his dog to avoid starvation on an expedition. Allen is known for trekking to the most remote, potentially dangerous corners of the planet, places where few Westerners have ever set foot, and immersing himself in indigenous communities. He travels without a GPS, satellite phone or other backup, relying instead on his own skills or those of local people.

With the help of Matses Indians, Allen became the first outsider to cross the Amazon Basin at its widest point, a journey of almost eight months. He was also the first non-native to traverse the Central Range of New Guinea and the first to cross from the mouth of the Orinoco to the mouth of the Amazon, which took him through 600 harrowing miles of forest by dugout canoe and on foot. While in New Guinea, Allen underwent a brutal secret initiation ceremony in which he was beaten daily for six weeks and given hundreds of permanent scars on his chest and back with a bamboo blade in order to make him as strong as a crocodile, according to the locals.

Audiences have been riveted by Allen’s TV programs, which include The Skeleton Coast, the story of his arduous three-and-a-half-month trip with reluctant camels through the Namib Desert; Edge of Blue Heaven, about his five-month journey through Mongolia, including a 1,000-mile walk across the Gobi Desert with camels as his only companions; and Ice Dogs, about his 1,000-mile trek through Siberia with a dog team during the worst winter in living memory. Allen’s passion for delving deep into extreme environments means he often travels without a camera crew, recording the journey himself so viewers can experience the action exactly as it happened. He says: “My job is to go to unknown, little known or misunderstood parts of the planet and describe and challenge our ideas about them.”

Allen has written 10 books, including Into the Abyss: Explorers on the Edge of Survival, which details his trek through Siberia and examines the things that keep people going in the face of disaster. He also compiled a definitive anthology of adventurers, The Faber Book of Exploration, which presents the stories of everyone from Vikings to cosmonauts.

The British-born Allen is a graduate of the University of East Anglia, where he studied environmental science.



Kevin Sites

One of the world’s most respected war correspondents, Kevin Sites has trekked the globe covering conflicts and disasters for national television networks. While reporting for CNN during the initial U.S. invasion of Iraq (2003), he and his team attempted to become the first western journalists to reach Tikrit and were briefly captured by Saddam Hussein’s Fedayeen militia and threatened with death. Sites returned to Iraq six more times to cover the situation there and won numerous awards for his work. He also spent nearly six months on the front lines in Afghanistan before and after the fall of the Taliban.

As a pioneering multi-media journalist, Sites often works as a one-man unit, traveling and reporting without a crew, and using portable digital technology to report and transmit his stories from trouble spots around the world, including the Middle East, South America, Central Asia and Eastern Europe. As the first-ever Yahoo! News correspondent, he traveled to every major armed conflict in the world from 2005 to 2006 and reported on the combatants, victims, causes and costs of these struggles. His multi-award-winning Web site, Kevin Sites in the Hot Zone, went deep into these danger zones to provide a close-up look at some of the war stories not getting coverage by the mainstream media. In 2007, Sites released a book about his experiences, In the Hot Zone: One Man, One Year, Twenty Wars, detailing his encounters with everyone from rebel soldiers to child brides and putting a human face on war. The book was packaged with a companion documentary produced by Sites, A World of Conflict.

Sites has received numerous accolades for his work, including the prestigious 2006 Daniel Pearl Award for Courage and Integrity in Journalism from the Los Angeles Press Club. In 2008, he was inducted into Northwestern University’s Medill Hall of Achievement and chosen as Manchester College’s Innovator of the Year. In 2007, Forbes magazine named Sites to its Web Celeb 25 list of “the biggest, brightest and most influential people on the Web today.” The Hot Zone project was designated by Time magazine as one of 2006’s 50 Coolest Web sites and was identified as the best online journalism site by both the National Press Club and the National Headliner Awards.

A native of Geneva, Ohio, Sites holds a master's degree from the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University. He’s also a certified Emergency Medical Technician and an avid scuba diver. When not on assignment, he lives in Southern California.