Top Canadian cave diver Jill Heinerth Presents for the Royal Canadian Geographical Society's spring speaker series on April 30, 2014.

Heinerth obtained a Bachelor of Fine Arts at York University in Toronto and had a successful career in graphic design. But at night and on weekends, she traveled to Tobermory, Ont. to scuba dive or teach others to dive.

Taking the first of many brave steps, Heinerth eventually chose to give up her career, sell her business and all her personal belongings and move to the Cayman Islands to pursue scuba diving full-time.

“I knew I needed to find a way to get out of the four walls of my office and blend my creative interests and background with my desire to be underwater,” she says.

With hard work and persistence, she was not only successful in becoming a professional scuba diver, but also conquered the roles of filmmaker, writer, underwater photographer and creator of the We Are Water project. She's also been awarded the Sir Christopher Ondaatje Medal for Exploration.

“I wanted to be an astronaut,” she says, “but a young girl at that time really wasn’t encouraged to follow that path. It wasn’t something that people thought was possible. But secretly, I always held that desire to become a diver. I didn’t get the opportunity to chase that dream until I was in university.”

Read more here: http://www.canadiangeographic.ca/blog/posting.asp?ID=1150