Born in Hampton, Virginia, Satcher graduated from Denmark-Olar High School in Denmark, South Carolina (1982), and went on to receive a Bachelor of Science degree as well as a doctorate in Chemical Engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He then went on to study medicine at Harvard Medical School, and received his medical doctorate in 1994. Satcher did his internship and residency at the University of California, San Francisco from 1995–2000, and postdoctoral research fellowship at University of California, Berkeley in 1998, and an orthopedic oncology fellowship at the University of Florida from 2000–2001.