Jennifer McMahon is a New Zealand nurse and nutritionist. From 2012 until November 2018, she was the president of the

New Zealand Red Cross Society New Zealand Red Cross or Rīpeka Whero Aotearoa is a humanitarian organisation, which has more than 9,000 members and volunteers. In New Zealand, Red Cross delivers core community services, such as Meals on Wheels, refugee re-settlement servic ...

. In 2018 she was made a Companion of the Royal Society Te Apārangi in recognition of her contributions to health research and to aiding disadvantaged populations worldwide.

Life

McMahon grew up in Malaysia, Singapore, England and New Zealand. After completing her nursing qualification in

Dunedin Dunedin ( ; mi, Ōtepoti) is the second-largest city in the South Island of New Zealand (after Christchurch), and the principal city of the Otago region. Its name comes from , the Scottish Gaelic name for Edinburgh, the capital of Scotland. Th ...

in 1978, she worked on an Aboriginal reserve in the

outback The Outback is a remote, vast, sparsely populated area of Australia. The Outback is more remote than the bush. While often envisaged as being arid, the Outback regions extend from the northern to southern Australian coastlines and encompass a n ...

of Australia, and in the

Torres Strait Islands The Torres Strait Islands are a group of at least 274 small islands in the Torres Strait, a waterway separating far northern continental Australia's Cape York Peninsula and the island of New Guinea. They span an area of , but their total land ...

and North Queensland. Her first posting with New Zealand Red Cross was in 1983 at a refugee camp on the Thai-Kampuchean (now Cambodian) border. She also served the Red Cross in

Angola , national_anthem = " Angola Avante"() , image_map = , map_caption = , capital = Luanda , religion = , religion_year = 2020 , religion_ref = , coordina ...

and was subsequently appointed regional nutritionist for Africa for the

International Committee of the Red Cross The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC; french: Comité international de la Croix-Rouge) is a humanitarian organization which is based in Geneva, Switzerland, and it is also a three-time Nobel Prize Laureate. State parties (signato ...

. On returning to New Zealand McMahon based herself in Dunedin and serves on the Advisory Committee to the University of Otago’s Centre for International Health and as an executive member of the Otago Medical Research Foundation. McMahon received an MBE in 1993, the Florence Nightingale Medal in 1991 and an Outstanding Service Medal from New Zealand Red Cross in 1989. In 2006, McMahon completed a Ph.D in human nutrition at the University of Otago.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:McMahon, Jennifer Living people Year of birth missing (living people) Companions of the Royal Society of New Zealand University of Otago alumni New Zealand Members of the Order of the British Empire Florence Nightingale Medal recipients New Zealand nurses New Zealand women nurses New Zealand nutritionists