Mangenda is a Gender specialist and an educator; her research area for her M.Phil in Gender Studies was on the school going experiences of pregnant and mothering teenagers. She co-founded 2YoungLives, a community-based mentoring scheme for pregnant adolescents, in 2017 and became the Research Assistant for this project as part of CRIBS, a NIHR-funded global health group in 2021. She is currently studying for her PhD at the University of Sierra Leone where she will be focussing on using photovoice methodology to better understand the lived experiences of this group of young women in Sierra Leone.