Meet the team: Jessie

Jessie Wender
Jessie is the Senior Picture Researcher at The New Yorker where she researches and selects images to accompany the articles and fiction pieces for the weekly magazine. She grew up in Santa Fe, New Mexico where she developed a love for the expansive sky and spicy food. Through her early pursuits in dance, theater, photography and the outdoors she cultivated a deep appreciation for creative expression. These activities were the impetus for many high school and college adventures and have taken her through every nook and cranny in New Mexico, from LA to NY to Alaska and across the globe to live in Sweden, Nepal and Scotland. Jessie lives in Brooklyn, enjoys running in Prospect Park, and is learning Capoeira. In this lifetime she hopes to spend a summer in Antarctica, get a higher degree and do a triathlon.

Hometown: Santa Fe, NM
Current Location: Brooklyn, NY
Job: Picture Researcher
Mongol Rally job: Rally documentation and Team’s unflappable positive attitude.
Countries visited: Canada, Denmark, Dominican Republic, Finland, France, Hungary, Israel, Mexico, Nepal, Norway, Spain, Sweden, UK and USA and Germany & Thailand if sleeping in an airport can be considered “visiting”.
Languages attempted to have spoken: Nepali, Spanish and French
Where you will pretend to be from when you get tired of answering questions about America: I’ll still say I’m from New Mexico.
Instruments attempted to have learned: piano, recorder and berimbau – I’m using the word attempted in the most forgiving of ways.
Ukulele song most excited to learn: I’ve never even touched a ukulele, so I’m excited to learn pretty much any song.
Country you're most excited about: Every single one of them! I have no idea what to expect… That’s probably not what you wanted to hear from your teammate.
If you were a car part, what would you be? I’d be both wing mirrors so I could have a wide view of the blind spots. Or maybe the U Joint.

Meet the team: Anand

Anand Patil
Anand was born in Detroit and got bitten by the travel bug when he went to college on the West coast. Since then he has climbed rocks all over the US, worked at the University of Alaska museum, hiked in the Himalayas, ridden a bike around Pinar del Rio province in Cuba and researched sickle cell disease in the Adivasi community as a volunteer at the Bhasha Research and Education Centre in Gujarat, India, among other travels. He pursued a childhood dream and studied physics as an undergraduate, but eventually realized that physicists don't actually get to go to the big bang and did his doctoral research on advanced statistical methods for inferring the processes driving ecological systems. He nominally enjoys playing the ukulele and banjo, outdoor activities and tinkering, but these days he spends much of his free time at the pub, because he lives in England.

Hometown: Detroit, MI
Current Location: Oxford, UK
Job: Postdoc Map-maker
Mongol Rally job: The Team’s keen sense of direction.
Countries visited: Canada, Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, Cuba, Alaska, UK, France, Italy, Switzerland, Kenya, Nepal, India, not counting airports.
Languages attempted to have spoken: Spanish, English, Hindi, Urdu, Marathi
Where you will pretend to be from when you get tired of answering questions about America: Alaska
Instruments attempted to have learned: Piano, Banjo, Ukulele
Ukulele song most excited to learn: "Papa Don't Preach"
Country you're most excited about: Tajikistan
If you were a car part, what would you be? If I were a bike part I'd be the Star Fangled Nut... on a car, I guess the timing belt.