Diva and Conquer

Outdoor Diva Christina Catlett

To me, a Mountain Hardwear Diva embodies the balance between a busy career and passion for the outdoors. My wife Christina works full-time as an Emergency Physician at Johns Hopkins and is the Associate Director of the Office of Critical Event Preparedness and Response. Nicknamed the "Disaster Diva," her love of the outdoors has become her salvation from the rigors of her career.

In the last four years, Christina has climbed nine mountains between 15,500 and 20,500 feet, including Mt. Kilimanjaro in Africa. Last year, she took a two and a half month leave of absence from her career to be a doctor at Base Camp at Mt. Everest (where she slept in a Mountain Hardwear Wraith!). This year, she took a month off to be the physician on a ship traveling from Siberia to the Arctic Circle and Alaska.

I am most proud of the fact that she uses her love of the outdoors to help others, leading medical relief missions to disaster and humanitarian zones such as Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. She and her team slept in tents, and Christina prepared them to be self-sufficient by providing them with water purification systems, camp stoves, and dehydrated meals so they would not burden the region's limited resources.

Christina is a gear hound and seems to enjoy shopping at outdoor stores more than in women's clothing stores. In her closet, you will find climbing, backpacking and mountaineering gear squeezing out business suits and scrubs. Unfortunately, she's a closet slob, so some of it is on the floor!

Nominated By Gregg Viola