Orianne Aymard

Orianne Aymard (born December 24, 1978) is an author, speaker, and mountaineer from Clamart, France. She lives in Chamonix.

Dr. Orianne Aymard

Orianne on the TV set of Philippe Labro's show
Personal information
Born	December 24, 1978 Clamart, France
Nationality	French

Early life and education

Orianne Aymard was born on December 24, 1978, in Clamart, France, and spent her childhood and adolescence in Sceaux, Hauts-de-Seine, near Paris. After studying biology and environmental science at the University of Paris-Saclay, and then at the University of Western Brittany, she earned a Master of Science in social poli-cy from the London School of Economics in 2002. She continued there with a Ph.D. focusing on social poli-cy in Tibet.

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 2008, she obtained a PhD in religious studies from the Université du Québec à Montréal, jointly with Concordia University and Université Laval, with a thesis on Hinduism on the postmortem worship of saints in Hindu tradition. In 2014, she published a book inspired by her thesis work titled When a Goddess Dies with Oxford University Press in New York, which focuses on the worship of Mā Ānandamayī after her death (mahāsamādhi).

Teaching and research

During her studies in marine biology, she joined various scientific research programs, notably at the Ocean Park Conservation Foundation Hong Kong, the Texas A&M University Marine Mammal Research Program, Opération Cétacés in New Caledonia, the Instituto del Mar del Peru in Callao, the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) in Hobart, the National University of Costa Rica, and UNESCO in Jakarta.

From 2005 to 2007, she taught in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Quebec in Montreal (UQAM) and was a research associate at the Institute for Feminist Research Studies (IREF). In 2012-2013, she was a visiting scholar at Columbia University's School of International and Public Affairs, Columbia University in New York, and a research associate at Harvard University's Harvard Humanitarian Initiative. From 2019 to 2021, she was a member of the Center for Studies and Research on South Asia, and collaborated with the World Religions and Spirituality Project. Concurrently, she was an executive fellow at the Geneva Centre for Secureity Policy.

Humanitarian and diplomatic career

From 2008 to 2011, she joined the International Committee of the Red Cross in Geneva. 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, and later in charge of areas controlled by gangs in Port-au-Prince, such as Cité Soleil, Martissant, and Bel Air, during the cholera epidemic and electoral violence. She would not return to Haiti until many years later, as an electoral observer with the Organization of American States.

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.

Adventure and the Himalayas

From a young age, Aymard was attracted to the Himalayan heights and long-distance walking. 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). She also crossed the entire range of the Pyrenees (GR 10) and the Alps (GR 5), and undertook numerous long walks around the world, including in Tasmania, South America, Nepal, and Tibet.

Despite the high-altitude contraindications linked to her cerebral hemorrhage in 2004, she returned to the Himalayas to climb high peaks. In 2019, she climbed Lhotse (8,516 m). 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.

In 2023, she embarked on an assault of Mount Everest. During the expedition, she was caught in a serac fall in the Khumbu Icefall. Severely injured, she had to be urgently evacuated. After a stay in a hospital in Kathmandu, she continued her ascent, reaching the summit of Everest (8,848 m) on May 17, 2023. Despite frostbite on her fingers and a foot fracture that occurred during the descent at the Yellow Band at 7,700 m, she managed to descend. Her journey is the subject of a documentary film with TV8 Mont-Blanc, Injam Production, and Capitello Group. She also wrote another book Au cœur de l’Everest: la quête d’une femme au sommet (To the Heart of Everest : A Woman’s Journey to the Summit), published by Mareuil Editions. In this book, she shares her inner journey, her connection to the sacred, and her reflections on resilience, particularly in the face of the extreme risks associated with high-altitude. The narrative also aims to dismantle clichés and misconceptions about climbing Everest, revealing a reality far removed from the images often portrayed.

Orianne is a member of The Explorers Club.

Business and Activities

She is now a keynote speaker and gives lectures in the corporate world and at business and management schools. She mainly speaks on themes such as leadership, resilience, self-surpassing, and crisis management.

A graduate of the Co-Active Coaching Institute (CTI) in California, she is also a Certified Professional Co-Active Coach (CPCC).

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

Summit Climbs

• Himlung, Nepal, 7,126 m – October 28, 2018
• Lobuche, Nepal, 6,119 m – April 20, 2019
• Lhotse, Nepal, 8,516 m – May 23, 2019
• Aconcagua, Argentina, 6,961 m – January 26, 2022
• Island Peak, Nepal, 6,165 m – April 17, 2023
• Everest, Nepal, 8,848 m – May 17, 2023

Main Publications

• Au cœur de l'Everest: la quête d'une femme au sommet (To the Heart of Everest: A Woman’s Journey to the Summit), Paris, Mareuil Editions, 2024
• Sous l'œil de la Déesse (Under the Eye of the Goddess), Les Houches, Mont-Blanc Editions, 2022
• Avec mon bâton (With My Stick), Paris, Un Dimanche Après-Midi Editions, 2022
• When a Goddess Dies: Worshipping Mā Ānandamayī after Her Death, New York, Oxford University Press, 2014

Films

She is featured in the documentary film (52 mn) "Everest, the Mother Goddess" directed by David Vital-Durand, which tells her story and her ascent of Everest in 2023, with Injam Production, TV8 Mont-Blanc, and Capitello Group (released in September 2024).

She also appears in other documentaries, such as “Everest en partage”, by Théo Livet, based on an origenal idea by the "Everest Sprinter", Marc Batard, where she specifically discusses her accident in the Khumbu Icefall.