Nearly 18 years ago, Benjamin Massenburg graduated from King Kekaulike High School. He put aside his boardshorts and started wearing a full wetsuit as he headed to the renowned Harvard University, which is located near Boston.
On Saturday, Massenburg will come back to Maui. He’ll be a guest speaker at the Northwest Society of Plastic Surgery conference, which will be held at the Fairmont Kea Lani Hotel in Wailea. Since he left his home in Kula as a presidential scholar 18 years ago, he has become a highly skilled plastic and craniofacial surgeon.
Massenburg said, “I’m really, really excited. I think every time I get to return home, it feels like taking in a breath of fresh air. Seriously, as soon as the plane touches the ground, I can feel myself starting to speak in the local dialect again.”
The 36-year-old also went to Kula Elementary School and Kalama Intermediate School.
Besides visiting his parents, one of his goals while back home is to catch a few waves at Hookipa. “I definitely want to go surfing. I still have a couple of surfboards at my home.”
After graduating from Harvard with a degree in Biomedical Engineering, Massenburg attended Icahn Medical School at Mount Sinai in New York City. In his final year of medical school, he spent a year on a Global Health program. He spent six months in Brazil working with a craniofacial surgeon and the rest of the year in Boston.
Then, Massenburg completed a six-year residency in Plastic and Reconstruction Surgery at the University of Washington in Seattle. After that, he did a one-year fellowship in Cleft and Craniofacial Surgery at the Children’s Hospital in Philadelphia. This path led him to his current position as an assistant professor of surgery at the University of California-San Diego. He also works as a plastic and craniofacial surgeon at both UCSD Medical Center and Rady’s Children Hospital.
Throughout his career, his clinical research has received a lot of praise. He especially mentions one paper. “In the specific area of cranial facials or pediatric plastic surgery, our journal publishes about 50 articles every month. My cranial facial paper was named the best paper of the year, which was really great,” Massenburg said.
His impressive resume led to his invitation to speak at the conference. His talk is titled “Long-term Outcomes Following Surgical Repair for Children with Bilateral Cleft Lip and Palate.”
He explained, “The cleft lip and palate is the most common cranial facial birth defect. It’s the most common birth defect on the face and the second most common in the whole body. It’s fairly common, with about one in 700 live births having a cleft and palate. It’s something I’m really passionate about.”
Massenburg was inspired to enter the medical field by his father, Ben, who has been an emergency room doctor at Maui Memorial Medical Center for a long time.
“Maui is a small island, and everyone knows each other. When we go to a restaurant or are out in public, and someone comes up to my dad and says, ‘Hey, you helped my child with this’ or ‘Hey, you helped me in the ER,’ and seeing how people are drawn to him, I always thought that was really amazing.
“I thought, ‘That’s so cool.’ He’s actually helping people, and that’s what initially attracted me to medicine. For a long time, I thought I wanted to go into emergency medicine because that’s all I knew. But then I got to know about all the different fields of medicine and plastic surgery.” Massenburg’s mother and sister are also in the healthcare field. His mother, Julianna, is a pharmacist in Maui, and his younger sister, Bailey, is a registered nurse in San Diego.
Even when he was at Harvard, Massenburg’s love for surfing never faded. He and his roommate from California, Madison Klein, started the Harvard Surf Team.
“Harvard has a very inclusive athletic environment. If you can get a group of people who are willing to do something together, the school will provide funding. So we got Matt Kinoshita, a surfboard shaper from Maui, to make us three surfboards. They have the Harvard Surf Team sticker on them, and they’re probably still around somewhere in Boston.”
“We would go surfing on weekends or after school. Boston is in an area where big ocean swells don’t often reach. The closest place to surf is the Cape, which is 45 minutes away. Even though Boston is on the water, it’s not that close to good surfing spots.”
Now that he lives in San Diego, getting to the waves is not a problem. But he has to plan his surfing time around his work and family. He and his wife, Negeen, have two daughters, Leila, who is 2 years old, and Roya, who is 3 months old. “Surfing is my main form of physical activity. I don’t really do other sports, though I might go biking once in a while,” Massenburg said.
Then he laughed and added, “The most common time for me to surf is at 1 p.m. on Saturdays because it’s the weekend and the girls are taking their naps. That’s when I can go surfing.”
Still, the surf in California is not as warm as in Hawaii. “I obviously love Maui and my home. It would be a dream of mine to one day offer facial care to the children of Hawaii. That’s kind of my dream, and I hope to establish a clinical connection there in the future.”
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