If Shakira wasn’t a singer, what would she be? “Probably a doctor,” she said at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, on Tuesday.
“I like medicine,” she said in an on-stage interview. Her “specialty,” she said, would likely be neuroscience, as the practice and similar discoveries about the brain “fascinate” her.
When the audience was asked if they would prefer to see Shakira as a doctor or musician, the crowd voiced clear favor of her current career choice. “I’d be an amazing doctor,” Shakira promised, before adding “I’d be a sexy doctor, though.”
When talking about her first interest in music, Shakira told the audience that her music teacher did not like her voice and would not let her into the school choir. The singer also recalled how many of her classmates told her: “Shakira, you sing like a goat.” It was her father though, the singer said, that was able to reassure her otherwise.
This interview came the day after Shakira won the World Economic Forum’s Crystal Award for her humanitarian work. Shakira started her charity Fundacion Piez Descalzos (Barefoot Foundation) when she was 18 with the mission of making education universally accessible to children. She got the idea for the nonprofit after her parents took her to a park where orphaned children were living and sleeping. The image stayed with her, she said. “I wanted to build state-of-the-art schools.”
“It is a challenge, and it comes with many obstacles,” Shakira explained. “We work in very remote areas,” and lack of infrastructure often makes things difficult.
Shakira also spoke on social media and how it gives people the power to make big changes and to build and support good causes. “You don’t really need to be a celebrity to effect change,” she told the Forum. “Thanks to the power of social media, everybody really has a platform and a voice.”
