Orianne Aymard

At 25 years old, following a cerebral hemorrhage in 2004 in northern India, near the samādhi (tomb) of Anandamayi Ma in Kankhal, at the foot of the Himalayas, she redirected her studies.

In 2014, she published a book inspired by her thesis work titled When a Goddess Dies[1][2][3][4] with Oxford University Press in New York, which focuses on the worship of Mā Ānandamayī after her death (mahāsamādhi).

After a mission in Burundi, in Gitega, where she promoted international humanitarian law to the military and visited detention sites, she was sent to Haiti just after the 2010 earthquake.

There, she was responsible for the restoration of family links,[6][7] and later in charge of areas controlled by gangs in Port-au-Prince, such as Cité Soleil, Martissant,[8] and Bel Air, during the cholera epidemic and electoral violence.

[9] From 2014 to 2018, after two years in the United States, she joined the French Ministry of Europe and Foreign Affairs, where she was primarily responsible for religious issues and violent extremism during the November 2015 Paris terrorist attacks.

At 19, she completed the 1700km Camino de Santiago from Le Puy-en-Velay to the Cape Finisterre, a pilgrimage she undertook again five years later starting from the Tour Saint-Jacques in Paris (2300km).

[10][11][12][13][14] A book was drawn from her ascent titled Sous l'œil de la Déesse (Under the Eye of the Goddess) with Mont-Blanc Editions (2022), directed by Catherine Destivelle, where she discusses the difficulty of being a woman in a very masculine environment.

Orianne Aymard, at Everest Base Camp (5,300m)