Lifetime Achievement Award for Prolific Author and Educator

Buffalo, NY, May 06, 2020 --(PR.com)-- Fredonia Author honored with Arthur T. Miller Lifetime Achievement Award.

Dr. Rayna M. Gangi, Fredonia native and longtime resident of Buffalo, New York has been awarded the prestigious Arthur T. Miller award for a lifetime of achievements encompassing multiple diverse careers and outstanding service to humanity.

Dr. Gangi graduated from Fredonia High School in 1968 and almost immediately joined the Marine Corps where she hoped to write about the Vietnam War. She was given an electronics occupational specialty instead of journalism and became a radio communication engineer. Though paralyzed in 1969, she relied on many Native American mentors and grandmothers to return her to active duty. After her honorable discharge she pursued computer programming, but programming was not a popular vocation in 1972. She was hired at IBM Corporation as a customer engineer, the first woman in the country to repair mainframe computers for Big Blue. The Buffalo Courier Express magazine called her “IBM’s Brainpicking Wonder Woman” in 1974. She continued her computer career at SUNY Buffalo while also pursuing her degree graduating in 1979 Summa Cum Laude.

Her career extended beyond the office as she worked with runaway children and battered women, securing grants from IBM and often spending holidays with kids she called “throw-aways and non-returnables.”

In1986 she left the computer industry to become a financial services professional with IDS specializing in retirement and estate planning, and then wrote her first screenplay “Keepers of the Western Door,” dedicated to the Seneca Nation. The book that followed is still in print retitled “Mary Jemison, The True Story,” with an epilogue by Peter Jemison stating the book is the truest version of his grand-aunt’s life.

Her holistic health career was ongoing and mentored by her Native grandmothers, but true to the culture, she didn’t see it as a paid career, but rather her duty to help humanity pursue wellness. Her next two books, “Forget the Cures, Find the Cause” became movers and shakers on Amazon and her previous book tours inspired her move to Alabama where she taught multiple courses on Holistic health, financial planning and writing from the heart at Faulkner University. Her “Introduction to Holistic Health” course was awarded best in class in multiple states and she was often a keynote speaker at forums such as the First Lady’s Forum on Women’s Health in Nevada.

Dr, Gangi continued to serve her community by counseling teens in trouble, often suicidal, and expanded that counseling to veterans for more than 12 years pro bono. To reach a wider audience and reach out to veterans overseas, she began her holistic health podcast with an audience upwards of 270,000 worldwide. A prolific author, her other books include “America, It Was Just an Idea,” a journey into politics, “Souls of the Fire,” a tribute to those in the alternative healthcare fields of massage and reflexology. “The Facebook Chronicles” and “Christmas Shorts, true stories of her may holidays. Her children’s books incorporate nature with rhyme and encourage children to leave the Ipad behind and take a walk with God. Her latest book, “Humanity, An American Memoir,” chronicles much of her life as she overcame hardships and fear to continue to serve her country.

Listed in many Who’s Who books including The Two Thousand Most Notable Women in America and Who’s Who in Finance and Industry, Dr. Gangi says with this lifetime achievement award she feels she can semi-retire knowing she’s helped as many people as she could and served God’s purpose for her life.