LI teacher Tiffany Seely will compete on next 'Survivor'

For the second time in three seasons, a teacher from Long Island is competing on "Survivor," with Plainview's Tiffany Seely on season 41 of the CBS island-survival series premiering Sept. 22. Long Beach elementary school teacher Tommy Sheehan won season 39 in 2019.

The upcoming season, which began shooting in March in Fiji's Mamanuca Islands, where "Survivor" has been based since season 33 in 2016, features the 47-year-old Seely as one of 18 competitors for the $1 million prize. Unlike in previous seasons, the contestants are divided into three tribes rather than two, for what the network calls "a faster, more intense" game than previously, with an "accelerated pace" that multiple "Survivor" fan sites attribute to a shorter playing time necessitated by the players' two-week COVID-19 quarantining.

Tiffany Seely, née Reiss, was born in December 1973 and raised in the Forest Hills neighborhood of Queens. She graduated from SUNY Cortland in 1995 with a degree in elementary education, followed by a stint at Brooklyn College and a master's degree in educational leadership and administration in 2003 from the Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts, according to her LinkedIn account.

She and her sister Lauren suffered tragedy early in their lives when their mother, Shevi Reiss, died of ovarian cancer at age 43 in 1990 after a three-year struggle with the disease. With their great-aunt having died of breast cancer, the siblings eventually had themselves tested for the BRCA gene, which predisposes women to breast and ovarian cancer. As Seely wrote in a "previvor" essay in 2010, she underwent a prophylactic double mastectomy with reconstruction in 2007. She has since become a public speaker about hereditary BRCA-gene awareness.

Seely has taught English Language Arts at the Jamaica Academy at Queens Alternate Learning Center, in Queens' Jamaica neighborhood, since 2014. In the early 2010s, she started the online clothing business Reiss' Pieces. The "Survivor" competitor also has two sons: Lucas, who attends Michigan State University in East Lansing; and Sean, who attends Bethpage High School.

On her social media Monday, Seely posted an official "Survivor" photo of herself wearing black crocheted pants and a black crocheted bikini top with a flower design.

Seely did not respond to Newsday's request for comment.