Natalie Duran is a professional

rock climber Rock climbing is a sport in which participants climb up, across, or down natural rock formations. The goal is to reach the summit of a formation or the endpoint of a usually pre-defined route without falling. Rock climbing is a physically and ...

and fitness model. She first appeared on obstacle course show ''

American Ninja Warrior American(s) may refer to: * American, something of, from, or related to the United States of America, commonly known as the "United States" or "America" ** Americans, citizens and nationals of the United States of America ** American ancestry, p ...

'' in 2012 and competed again in 2016, becoming one of two women to advance to the Los Angeles finals.

Early life and education

Duran was born on July 24, 1991 in

Moreno Valley, CA Moreno Valley is a city in Riverside County, California, United States, and is part of the Riverside–San Bernardino–Ontario metropolitan area. It is the second-largest city in Riverside County by population and one of the Inland Empire's p ...

. She graduated in 2013 from the

University of California, Riverside The University of California, Riverside (UCR or UC Riverside) is a public land-grant research university in Riverside, California. It is one of the ten campuses of the University of California system. The main campus sits on in a suburban distr ...

with a degree in neuroscience. She is a staff clinical researcher at

UCLA Health UCLA Health is a health system which comprises a number of hospitals, the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA and an extensive primary care network in the Los Angeles region. As a regional health provider, it benefits from the academic affili ...

studying

Inflammatory Bowel Disease Inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) is a group of inflammation, inflammatory conditions of the colon (anatomy), colon and small intestine, Crohn's disease and ulcerative colitis being the principal types. Crohn's disease affects the small intestine a ...

. As a fitness model, she posed while rock climbing and wearing an ostomy bag to demonstrate the device's usability and raise awareness of inflammatory bowel disease.

Career

Duran first appeared on the obstacle course TV show ''

'' in 2013. She returned in

Season 8 A season is a division of the year based on changes in weather, ecology, and the number of daylight hours in a given region. On Earth, seasons are the result of the axial parallelism of Earth's axial tilt, tilted orbit around the Sun. In tempera ...

(2016) and competed in the Los Angeles qualifying round. She was one of the first two women on ''

'' to get to the new 14 1/2-foot Warped Wall, and moved on to the city finals. She competed as a wildcard in the Vegas finals. She is a brand ambassador for a company called Rise Bar, and has also become a sponsored athlete for Mad Rock Climbing. She is also a member of the original series "Team Ninja Warrior" on

Esquire Network Esquire Network was an American pay television network that was a 50/50 joint venture between NBCUniversal and the Hearst Corporation. The network carried programs aimed at a metrosexual audience centering on travel, cooking, sports and fashion ...

and first appeared on Season 1 Episode 2. In 2019, Duran joined the cast of

MTV MTV (Originally an initialism of Music Television) is an American cable channel that launched on August 1, 1981. Based in New York City, it serves as the flagship property of the MTV Entertainment Group, part of Paramount Media Networks, a di ...

's '' The Challenge: War of the Worlds''. She placed 4th overall and was the only woman to complete the 2-day final challenge. In the same year, she also competed on '' The Challenge: War of the Worlds 2'', where she reached the final for a second time after defeating teammate Laurel Stucky in elimination.

Youtube

Duran joined YouTube early in 2006, becoming one of the first generation of channels to create

vlog A video blog or video log, sometimes shortened to vlog (), is a form of blog for which the medium is video. Vlog entries often combine embedded video (or a video link) with supporting text, images, and other metadata. Entries can be recorded in ...

style videos. Her channel "NDTitanLady" has reached up to 130,000 subscribers with over 15.5 million collective views. She took a hiatus from posting consistently in 2012 due to her growing career as a medical researcher at UCLA. Since then Natalie has announced she will be posting videos again starting November 2016.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Duran, Natalie American Ninja Warrior contestants Living people People from Moreno Valley, California 1991 births University of California, Riverside alumni The Challenge (TV series) contestants