Mary de Boer grew up in Cleveland Heights, Ohio along with her twin sister and older brother. She graduated summa cum laude in 2007 from Pomona College in Claremont, CA with a degree in English Literature and a pre-medical sciences background. As an undergraduate she also spent time studying at the Goethe Institut in Berlin and at the University of Vienna, as well as working in a series of remote pediatric and parturition care centers near Ayacucho, Peru.

Mary worked as the 2007-8 Writing Associates Program Intern at Swarthmore College in Swarthmore, PA while also participating in rural development projects in Matagalpa, Nicaragua and co-leading a youth group trip to Cape Town, South Africa. From 2008-9, she has been working with several international NGOs in the Dar es Salaam and Dodoma regions of Tanzania, variously evaluating a mosquito net program, helping develop a national sanitary birth-kit distribution project, teaching English as a second language to orphaned young women, and crossing the border to feed giraffes in Kenya.

Mary will be studying for an MSc in Health, Community and Development at the LSE and training for the London Marathon. Upon leaving the LSE, she hopes to continue with a career in anthropologically-influenced international public health.

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