Some belated news: After a decade on the board of
Medic, I stepped aside in January, ending one of my most long-lasting and rewarding professional chapters.
I first encountered Medic in 2013, when I was a Principal at the Skoll Foundation searching for social entrepreneurs in health with demonstrated impact and a trajectory toward even more. Cell phone usage was exploding across Africa. mPesa had already shown the world that the continent would leapfrog brick-and-mortar infrastructure entirely.
A few years prior, then-Stanford-undergrad
Josh Nesbit had spent time in Malawi with community health workers — unsung local heroes walking 35 miles a week, door to door, delivering essential primary and preventive care and capturing critical health data. Seeing they were still using–and hand-delivering–paper ledgers, Josh saw an opportunity for mobile technology to ease the CHWs' burden, improve care quality, and increase health equity. Medic Mobile was soon born.
As I came to know Josh, his co-founder
Isaac Holeman, and their early global team, I was struck not just by their technical skills, but by the genuine respect they had for the CHWs and health systems they sought to serve. Humility. Real openness to feedback. Ingenuity. Medic won the Skoll Award for Social Entrepreneurship in 2014.
I was honored to join the board in 2015, and over the next ten years, the organizations’ journey unfolded beyond any dream or prediction:
🤳 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗽𝗿𝗼𝗱𝘂𝗰𝘁 evolved from Medic-built tools deployed via SMS and mobile app to stewardship of the Community Health Toolkit — a free, open-source digital public good that health systems and developers worldwide can adapt and deploy themselves.
📈 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝘀𝗰𝗮𝗹𝗲 grew from small groups of CHWs in rural health outposts to national adoption by ministries of health, with tens of thousands of CHWs across every district of entire countries.
🌍 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗹𝗲𝗮𝗱𝗲𝗿𝘀𝗵𝗶𝗽 shifted decisively toward the Global South — in both the senior team and the board, which evolved from a circle of trusted Silicon Valley advisors meeting over burritos in the Mission to a fully remote global strategy board with expertise in tech, global health, and partnerships.
🎤 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗺𝗼𝘃𝗲𝗺𝗲𝗻𝘁 grew from CHWs being systematically undervalued to well-coordinated global advocacy for them to be salaried, skilled, supervised, and supplied.
None of it was linear. We navigated major strategy pivots, three CEO transitions, the trauma of COVID, and brutal cuts to global health funding. But through all of it, this organization gave me a beloved set of colleagues and a through-line of purpose during years when so much else was shifting.
As I prepared to serve on Newton City Council, and as Medic's Interim CEO
Dykki Settle prepared to pass the baton to new Co-Executive Directors
Shreya Bhatt and
Andra Blaj—internal leaders with global perspectives and deeply earned trust—I knew it was time.
I'll be forever grateful for these humans and for this work.