I am a native of Montréal, Canada, where I attended Collège André-Grasset for my undergraduate degree in Health Sciences. After graduating from college, I attended the University of Montréal Medical School, where I obtained my M.D. degree in 1979. I finished Orthopaedic Surgery training at his medical school alma mater in 1984. Post residency, I completed a series of Orthopaedic Surgery fellowships: Musculoskeletal Infections in Senegal, Pelvis and Acetabular Surgery in Paris, and Orthopaedic Trauma at the San Francisco General Hospital-UCSF.

I served as an Attending Surgeon at SFGH from 1988-1991, then pursued some international relief opportunities through the Red Cross.I later settled into private practice in Merritt Island, FL where my clinical focus was Trauma and Joint Replacement. In 1999, I retired from practice to pursue additional training as a public health scholar at the UC-Berkeley School of Public Health (MPH, 2001), and the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (MSc, 2002).  I have been fortunate enough to have worked in over 40 different developing countries.