The Bramante bio Education: Duluth East High, then Dartmouth University, with a sociology major and ecology minor. Cobbled together credits from schools in Minnesota, Colorado (Olympic training headquarters) and independent study at Cal-Berkeley. "I worked hard to piece that together."

Family: Husband Anthony is a former Greenpeace and antiwar activist now serving as an officer in the U.S. Marines. They married in July 2006.

Hobbies: Cooking (butternut squash soup, bread, anything with lentils), knitting (she made the curtains in her apartment) and "mostly I just hang out with friends."

Guilty pleasure: Chocolate. What kind? "Oh, milk chocolate. Dark chocolate's not sweet enough; it's almost too healthy to be a guilty pleasure."

Favorite quote: "Wherever I go, there I am." Bramante learned this Zenlike aphorism from her eighth-grade math teacher Mr. Nelson. "I use it to help me focus."