User:Blittle/Alexa Canady

Dr. Canady was born November 7, 1950 in Lansing Michigan into an intellectual, educated family, and her intelligence was recognized early on. "I came from a family in which education was very important, and women had a history of being very bright and finishing school very early. My grandmother was teaching by the time she was sixteen, and my mother finished college when she was nineteen." She cites her mother and her grandmother as critical role models, and the people after whom she has modeled her life. It is these women she credits with giving her the courage to lead the way into a field where no black women had ever been.

In 1977 at the age of 26, Alexa Irene Canady became the first female and the first African American neurosurgeon. Chief of neurosurgery at Children's Hospital of Michigan in Detroit from 1993 to 2001, Dr. Canady has pioneered new techniques in treating trauma in children. Considered a visionary in the field, most of her patients were 10 or younger.