BY KAREN BOSSICK

Patricia Velasquez was a 17-year-old college student studying accounting and engineering when a stint in the Miss Venezuela pageant led to an opportunity to be the world’s first Latina supermodel.

At first, Velasquez was reluctant. She’s always considered modeling superficial since her parents—both teachers—had raised her to value education.

Then she realized that she could use $30 a month of her earnings to provide the apartment that she had grown up in with running water. No longer would her mother have to carry water up 15 flights of stairs.

Velasquez began walking the runways for such haute couture design houses as Chanel, Gucci and Versace.

Patricia leant her looks to the covers of “Sports Illustrated” swimsuit edition, “Vogue,” “Bazaar” and “Marie Claire,” inspiring young Latina girls to aspire to bigger things. And, in time, she found herself not only acting in movies but producing them, while starting a charity to help the impoverished indigenous people of the village her mother had come from.

Velasquez, now 46, will share what she’s learned along the way during the Alturas Institute’s Conversations with Exceptional Women Thursday and Friday, Sept. 21-22, at Ketchum’s Community Library. She will be among 15 speakers, including Astronaut Barbara Morgan. (Read on for more information.)

“I’m super excited about the conference because I don’t so something like this very often,” she said. “It’s very challenging to get a group of women like they’ve assembled for this conference together. But, with everything going on in world now, we all need inspiration.”

Velasquez’s training as a dancer beginning at 5 contributed to her success as a model.

“I had a knowledge of my body that others didn’t,” she said. “I knew, for instance, that if I pointed my toes a little as I walked, it was going to look much more beautiful than if I didn’t.”

At the same time, her thirst for knowledge prompted her to dig into the history of people and locations on which she was shooting, prompting her to add to the level of creativity of the shoot. And her honey-colored skin gave her an exotic look that got her more jobs on location than she might have gotten, otherwise.

Still, at 18, Velasquez was thrust out on to an adult world she was not really prepared for. She rarely spent more than a day in one place. She’d spend six hours in Paris and start heading to Madrid, only to get a call from her agent that she needed to go to Dubai.

“It was a crazy, wonderful industry at a time when there really was such a thing as supermodel,” she said. “You have to be extremely disciplined because you’re living at a very, very fast speed. For seven years I never spent more than 10 days at a time in New York where I was living—and that was usually for a fashion show.

“I once tried to figure out what other profession travels like that and, really, no one. Musicians and athletes might travel a lot, but they’re traveling with their band or their team. Models always travel by themselves.”

That said, Velasquez had difficulty staying in one place for a long time after she stopped modeling, even though it was something she had craved.

“At first, if I was in longer than three weeks, I went crazy,” said Velasquez, who is fluent in English, Spanish, French and Italian.

Going crazy, however, was short-lived as she found herself acting in such movies as “Ugly Betty” and such TV shows as “CSI: Miami,” “Arrested Development” and “The Apprentice.”

Again, she had never envisioned herself as an actress, but she agreed to appear in a film about saving an Indian village in the Amazon and found she enjoyed acting. Next she knew, she was playing Imhotep’s sexy lover Anck-Su-Namun in “The Mummy,” the global blockbuster starring Brendan Fraser.

“People loved ‘Mummy’ so much,” said Velasquez, who spent eight hours a day learning boxing and martial arts for its sequel. “The worst part was when the snake went under my shirt. The trainer said, ‘Let her do what she wants.’ The snake wrapped around my body and I wanted to die.”

But, if Velasquez had to pick her favorite, it would be “Liz in September,” a 2014 Venezuelan drama in which she played a woman who seeks love even as she is dying of cancer.

“It’s a story of love and friendship, a story of hope and the passing of life—all important things,” she said.

Even though films can change lives, Velasquez found herself wanting to do more to make a difference in the world.

When she learned that a child died each day in the village her Indian mother was born, she founded the Wayuu Taya Foundation to improve the lives of those living on the Guarjira Peninsula on the border of Venezuela and Colombia.

She decided to address famine and illiteracy by setting up a preschool for 30 youngsters who would get two meals a day while learning to read. Today her foundation’s schools reach more than 3,500 children.

Her celebrity has even gotten the likes of Hillary Clinton and Katie Ford, former CEO of Ford Models, to pitch in, helping her to get the foundation started by putting a water pump in a Wayuu village.

“The United States is the only country in the world where you can really do something like this,” said Velasquez, whose father took his family to Paris and Mexico for a few years while working for UNESCO. “And it’s because of the reasons this country was formed, the idea that’s there’s space for everyone. The people of the United States have compassion. They care for the one next to them.”

She paused.

“Sometimes we get off the road—like now. But that means we go back to our original mission. Because of social media and reality TV, people want instant gratification. But that instant gratification is not going to last. At the core, we need to help someone. It’s really that simple. And we need to do it not because of how great it makes us look but thinking, ‘I hope this can make a difference in someone’s life.”

CONVERSATIONS WITH EXCEPTIONAL WOMEN

THURSDAY

The two-day Conversations with Exceptional Women will open at 9 a.m. Thursday, Sept. 21, with a “Postscript on the 2016 Presidential Campaign.” It will feature Kathleen Tarr, who developed programs for women’s vets; investigative journalist Lynn Walsh; Caroline Heldman, author of “Rethinking Madam President,” and Joanne Freeman, professor of history at Yale University and an Alexander Hamilton scholar.

At 10 a.m. “Women on the Silver Screen” will feature actress Patricia Velasquez, actress Naomi McDougall-Jones, actress/filmmaker Wendy Haines, film producer Christine Walker and Caroline Heldman.

At 11 a.m. Lynn Walsh, president of the Society of Professional Journalists, will discuss “Freedom of the Press in America” with David Adler.

At 1:15 p.m. astronaut Barbara Morgan will discuss “Curiosity, Creativity and Outer Space,” followed by “The Influence of Curiosity in Our Lives” with several speakers including Jeanette Schneider, who created a LEAD for Women mentoring chapter, and Sun Valley Magazine’s Laurie Sammis.

FRIDAY

AT 9 a.m.-International Advocacy for Human Rights, featuring Patricia Velasquez, Tami Longaberger and others. At 10 a.m.-“My Educational Journey: From Mozambique to America” featuring Dominique Goncalves, who has been involved in the conservation of Gorongosa National Park.

At 10:30 a.m. “ ‘Bite Me’ ”and Other Creative Thoughts” with Naomi McDougall Jones and David Adler. At 11:15 a.m. “Straight Talk: The Incredible Journey of Patricia Velasquez.” At 1 p.m. “Seeking Gender Equality in America. At 2 p.m. “Letters to My Younger Self.” At 2:30 p.m. “Advice to My Younger Self.”

Tickets are $100 and include light breakfasts and lunches with speakers. Scholarships are available, and students who pre-register at www.alturasinstitute.com may attend for free.