Alexa Canady

November 7, 1950

Also Known For : Educator, Surgeon

Birth Place : Lansing, Michigan, United States of America

Birth Element : Metal

Alexa Canady Biography, Life, Interesting Facts

Childhood and Early Life

Alexa Canady was born on the 7 November 1950 into a comfortable upper-middle-class family in Lansing, Michigan. Her father, Clinton Canady, Jr. was a dentist and her mother Elizabeth Golden was a teacher.

Education

Alexa Canady enrolled a student at the University of Michigan as a mathematics major. She changed her major to Zoology and obtained a BA in 1971. She was awarded her medical degree from the University of Michigan in 1975.

Medical Career

Alexa Canady then became a surgical intern at Yale-New Haven Hospital (1976) before training at the University of Minnesota where she became the first African-American women neurosurgery resident in the country. She was appointed a pediatric neurosurgery fellow at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (1981-1982) and in 1984 became and first African-Woman neurosurgeon to be certified by the American Board of Neurological Surgery.

In 1987, Canady was appointed Chief of Neurosurgery at the Children’s Hospital of Michigan and remained there until she retired in 2001. Living in Florida, she practised part-time at the Pensacola Scared Heart Hospital as a consultant and part-time surgeon.

Awards and Achievements

Awards and recognition Alexa Canady received include the Children’s Hospital of Michigan’s Teacher of the Year Award (1984), the University of Detroit Mercy Medallion (1988) and the American Medical Women’s Association President’s Award (1993). She was inducted into the Michigan Women’s Hall of Fame (1989).