BuddyPress.org

Have you tried xprofile_get_field_data?

`
$bio = xprofile_get_field_data(‘Bio’, $user_id);
`

Not sure what you mean by ‘outside’ BP…

If you can’t use xprofile_get_field_data,
then a custom call to your database would work, but you’ll need to figure out the id of the Bio field.
`
$bio = $wpdb->get_var( “SELECT value FROM wp_bp_xprofile_data WHERE user_id = $user_id AND field_id = $field_id_for_bio” );
`