Dr. Mayling Simpson received her BA at Longwood College in Farmville, Virginia, and a Ph.D. in Anthropology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She went on to have a 40-year career in global public health, working at The Johns Hopkins University, the World Health Organization, and Catholic Relief Services in East Africa, living in eight foreign countries, and working in many more. She has conducted public health research in Iran and the Philippines and on the Roma in Serbia. She has published professional articles in academic journals, a short story in the Aspen Times (2012), and a book with co-authors entitled A Paper Life: Serbia’s Roma in the Underworld of Waste Scavenging and Recycling (2005). She has a new book in publication, Lives Guided by Honor - How VMI Shaped the Class of 1968. In 1969, she married her high school sweetheart, a VMI 1968 graduate, and was inspired to write this book after attending his 50th class union. She looks at VMI through her anthropological lens as a person trained to observe and analyze cultures and interpret meaning. She lives in Colorado with her husband and near her two adult children and three grandchildren.