Regina Benjamin served as the 18th U.S. surgeon general from 2009 to 2013, appointed by President Barack Obama. Prior to her tenure as the nation's physician, she practiced as a country doctor in rural Alabama. As founder and CEO of the rural BayouClinic in Bayou La Batre, Dr. Regina Benjamin is making a difference to the underserved poor in a small fishing village on the Gulf Coast of Alabama. It is a town of about 2500 people, about 80 percent of her patients live below the poverty level. Since 2013, she also has served as the chair of Public Health Sciences at Xavier University in New Orleans, LA.
Dr. Benjamin's career has taken some interesting twists. While completing her undergraduate degree in chemistry from Xavier University in New Orleans, she served as a student intern-trainee for the Central Intelligence Agency. After earning her doctor of medicine degree at the University of Alabama at Birmingham in 1984, she served her internship and residency in family practice at the Medical Center of Central Georgia at Macon. From 1990 to 1995 she was a medical director at several nursing homes, and in 1993 she went on a medical mission to Honduras.