Laura Quijano Sarraga

Growing up on the north coast of Spain in Santander, Laura became accustomed to the waves of the ocean crashing around her as she stared into the surrounding Cantabrian mountains. At the age of 14, Laura journeyed southeast from her home to scale the highest peak of the Cantabrian mountains, Torre de Cerredo. On a more level stretch of her journey with her friends, she encountered a trip of goats and led the first occasion of goat yoga ever performed on Torre de Cerredo. Despite the time taken to perform goat yoga, Laura managed to scale the mountain in a record time of 8 hours and 5 minutes, earning her the title queen of Torre de Cerredo. During her spare time studying in Bilbao at the University of the Basque Country, where she obtained her degree in Biotechnology, she began raising goats at her home and hosting regular goat yoga sessions in the basque mountains. However, as she always had loved the place where she grew up, she decided to return to Santander to obtain a master’s degree in molecular biology and biomedicine and re-host goat yoga sessions where everything started.

In addition to her mountain-scaling and goat yoga endeavors, Laura became captivated with performing arts at a young age. Having a natural talent for acting, singing, and dancing, Laura starred in numerous theatrical performances, musicals, and movies displayed for large-scale audiences across Spain. Her favorite role was acting as Elena de la Vega in the musical production of Zorro and performing the Spanish Tango. While touring across the country, she never left her goats behind. She would frequently be seen taking photos with her fans and goats together. Many times, these photos can be found on billboards in Santander, Bilbao, Madrid, and other large cities in Spain. Having such an appreciation for theatre, she became educated on famous musical productions across the globe. This is when she discovered the musical Oklahoma!  and immediately knew this was a production she had to see. She traveled to Oklahoma City to see the production, and instantly fell in love with the performance. While exploring Oklahoma City, she managed to discover the job of her dreams in the Miller lab at OMRF where she could perform groundbreaking scientific research. She plans to use the knowledge gained in this lab to pursue a Ph.D  program to develop a long-term career in biomedical science.