[2] Rees trained in general and plastic surgery at the Genesee Hospital and New York Hospital–Cornell Medical Center in Manhattan.
[2] In 1956, while on fellowship in London, Rees traveled to Tanzania, where he provided emergency medical treatment to a severely injured local.
[2] This experience motivated him to help establish the Flying Doctors Service of East Africa alongside Michael Wood and Archibald McIndoe.
[2] Rees served as a professor at the New York University School of Medicine and as a president of the American Society for Aesthetic Plastic Surgery.
[2] He retired in the mid-1980s due to osteoarthritis and moved to Santa Fe, where he pursued sculpting inspired by African cultures and wildlife.