Scrimshaw was born in Boston in 1945 and was raised in
Guatemala until she was 16. Her father was food scientist
Nevin S. Scrimshaw, a professor at
Massachusetts Institute of Technology who chaired MIT's department of nutrition and
food science. She earned her B.A. from
Barnard College in
Latin American studies and Ph.D. in anthropology from
Columbia University, where she studied under
Margaret Mead. She taught at
Columbia University and the
University of California, Los Angeles, where she served as associate and acting dean of the
UCLA Fielding School of Public Health. She remained president until 2008. She later became president of
The Sage Colleges before stepping down in 2017. Scrimshaw is a member of the
Institute Of Medicine, later known as the
National Academy of Medicine. She is also a fellow of the
American Association for the Advancement of Science, the
American Anthropological Association,
Society for Applied Anthropology, and past president of the
Society for Medical Anthropology. == References ==