Regina attended the village school run by Catholic catechists, then went to a Catholic boarding school in Limanmanu. Hungry for more knowledge, she joined a Catholic religious order, which seemed to her to be the next step in education, but she left in 1965 and went back to Buka. She taught for a while in a Catholic school, but 'ran away' to Port Moresby.
In 1973 she came to Australia on a Churchill Fellowship to do a course in Sydney on teaching deaf childen, and during this time she married Australian Ian McKenzie.
Back in Port Moresby, with the support of Michael Somare, she established the country's first special school for the deaf, at Hohola.
In 1987 she and her husband moved to Canberra, where she became Education Officer for the High Commission until events in Bougainville led to her being viewed with suspicion, and she was forced to leave. She later became a language tutor for the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, teaching Tok Pisin to DFAT and AusAID staff.
