Dr Girma Makonnen finished his secondary schooling at St Joseph High in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia in 1992. He then traveled abroad for further education. He graduated from University of Minnesota, School of Pharmacy with his Doctor of Pharmacy degree in 2001. After that he attended medical school in New York city at Mount Sinai School of Medicine and did his residency training in the field of Neurosurgery at Ohio State Medical center in Columbus, Ohio. Upon completing his training, he worked at Lynchburg General Hospital, in Virginia, as a staff neurosurgeon and then moved to Grand Forks, North Dakota to work at Altru Hospital before he decided to move permanently to Ethiopia in July of 2018. He has been working at Marcia surgical center since that time.