Dr. Makena’s Legacy
A Kenyan by birth, Jean Ann Makena Marangu graduated college Magna Cum Laude from Olivet Nazarene University in Kankakee, Illinois in 1980. She performed Graduate Studies in Physiology at Howard University in Washington, D.C., was an Honor Fellow in International Development at American University in Washington, D.C., and received her M.D. degree from the Medical College of Virginia in 1987.
Dr. Marangu completed a five year General Trauma and Surgery Residency at the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey, a Hand Surgery Fellowship with the Joseph H. Boyes Foundation at the University of Southern California, and a Plastic Surgery Residency at the University of California in Irvine.
A well-known philanthropist, Dr. Marangu was president and cofounder, along with famed anthropologist, Dr. Richard Leakey, of SADIA, an organization dedicated to addressing the needs of children dying each day from untreated surgical conditions such as appendicitis, burns, and traumatic injury caused by the overwhelming void of neurosurgeons, pediatric and plastic surgeons in Sub-Saharan Africa.
Dr. Marangu is credited with having achieved the impossible for African children by her gathering together physicians and laypersons to give surgical training and on-site care.
In 1993 Dr. Marangu received the F. Edward Johnson Award for Outstanding Achievement in Service to Children by the Advisory Council of the African Development Foundation and the National Museum of African Art, a division of the Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C. The award was presented to Dr. Marangu by Senator Claiborne Pell on behalf of First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton.
Dr. Marangu is the stimulus behind and co-founder of ANSWER AFRICA.
Dr. Marangu passed away in September 2015.
“If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal.”
— 1 Corinthians 13:1
