Satel is a psychologist, lecturer at Yale School of Medicine, and the W. H. Brady Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.

She earned a bachelor's degree from Cornell University, a master's degree from the University of Chicago and an MD degree from Brown University. She completed her residency in psychiatry at Yale University. In 1993 and 1994, she was a Robert Wood Johnson Health Policy Fellow with the U.S. Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions.