Jean Rambo was born March 25, 1925 in Rutherford, North Carolina. She received her bachelor’s degree in anthropology at the University of New Mexico in 1947 and moved to New York. Rambo worked as a nurse instructor until 1955, when she moved to Las Vegas, Nevada. She was a cadet nurse, the nurse matron in a local jail in Las Vegas and associate director for nursing education at Southern Nevada Memorial Hospital. Rambo went back to school at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas (UNLV) and graduated with a master’s degree in education administration in 1992.