Chief Strategy Officer

Maisha Meds is hiring! We’re looking for a visionary leader and relationship builder to improve health care in Africa.

About Maisha Meds

Maisha Meds is an organization dedicated to improving health care in Africa. We began full-time operations in 2017 and over the past few years has grown to support over 7 million patient encounters at ~2000 pharmacies and drug shops annually across Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, Nigeria, and Zambia. We are building the financial and technology infrastructure to enable global health funders to pay for health outcomes at the last mile, with an initial focus on malaria case management. Recent results from two randomized controlled trials with UC Berkeley showed that our programs lead to a statistically significant 350% increase in appropriate and high quality malaria care and a 450% increase in adoption of longer-acting contraceptives. Based on these results, we have begun securing large-scale funding awards to support scale-up of this technology to reach over 10,000 health facilities and 20 million patients, and to directly pay for health outcomes for 2 million patients annually by 2026. In addition, we are actively building programs to support HIV pre-exposure prophylaxis and treatment, malnutrition support, and affordable eyeglasses.

Our work is funded by USAID Development Innovation Ventures, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the Children’s Investment Fund Foundation, Grand Challenges Canada, Pfizer, and others, and we are starting to build partnerships with multilateral global health funders, pharmaceutical companies, and national health insurance funds to have them pay us on a contract basis for health outcomes. We use data from our point of sale software to design programs that leverage financial incentives to improve uptake of high impact health products. And we measure our success by our ability to improve the quality and affordability of healthcare diagnosis, treatment, and prevention for low-income patients across Africa.

About the role

We believe that our model has the potential to increase the transparency, efficiency, and cost-effectiveness of healthcare programs in low-income countries by enabling global health funders to pay for results while leveraging debt and equity financing to help achieve scale. Building these programs will require a paradigm shift from global health funders. Achieving this will require that we:

• Communicate this value proposition to potential partners, funders, and customers
• Develop experimental proof-of-concepts and grow those with most potential for impact and scale
• Collaborate with groups like USAID, Global Fund, UNFPA, and governments to structure deals
• Rigorously evaluate and report on these health outcomes at scale
• Build partnerships with governments, licensing bodies, distributors, NGOs, and others to support scale-up

We are looking for a leader with experience closing complex financing and partnership deals to lead an interdisciplinary team focused on global health funder and government engagement, partnership development, program design, research, and external communications to achieve these goals. Please note that our current CSO will also continue to support these activities 3 days / week as Strategic Advisor on Global Partnerships. This work will include:

Leading global health strategy and business development, with a focus on paying for outcomes: You will help us to structure results-based financing (RBF) deal, working alongside global health funders and debt and equity investors to enable payment mechanisms for tens (and maybe someday hundreds) of millions of patients across Africa to access high-quality healthcare.

• Build a pipeline of results-based financing contracts with global health funders, with a focus on closing deals worth upwards of $25M annually within the next 2 years for our flagship malaria, family planning, and HIV PrEP programs that are ready for scale-up

• Develop a compelling value proposition for global health funders and governments to support provider performance incentives and patient subsidies for high-impact health products, including financial models and decks, structuring terms, and winning letters of commitment
• Oversee reporting on results to global health funders and governments and pursue follow-on commitments and institutionalize this funding for long-term sustainability

Guiding strategy development and support program incubation and research activities to bolster this strategy: You will work with our executive team to refine a 5-year organizational plan with related targets and work with both our incubation team and our external research partners to validate and optimize the activities in our plan with a focus on health impact and cost-effectiveness.

• Support development of a 5-year strategic plan and associated targets, which will include prioritizing new program areas for incubation and work with the finance business development team to ensure adequate resourcing for both hitting scale-up targets and building new earlier-stage programs
• Lead our incubation efforts for new programs with early-stage funding, including closing new funding for small-scale activities, running pilots to validate, and developing strategy for larger-scale evaluation and potential scale-up
• Engagement with research partners to validate these earlier-stage ideas and develop an at-scale rapid evaluation framework for scaled programs

Overseeing external communications and partnerships: You will be responsible for external messaging; engagement with healthcare and economics researchers; and partnerships development with healthcare and technology providers to enable us to scale this model.

• Supervise communications team to provide regular compelling touch points for conveying information about us externally
• Lead partnership with economics and healthcare researchers, including building partnerships with world-class institutions to ask and answer questions related to healthcare delivery, incentives design, and market intelligence
• Develop scale partnerships in Uganda, Nigeria, Kenya, and Tanzania to enable adoption of this technology at scale, with a goal of building a pathway of 100,000 health facilities using our software in 10 years

Qualifications

We are seeking exceptional professionals with 8+ years of senior management experience in a fast-growing organization and deep health sector experience. Our ideal candidate will have the following:

• Deep passion for healthcare delivery and impact, and strong alignment with our mission

• Record of building funding partnerships and innovative finance models, especially with governments, multilateral global health funders, and private foundations

• Record of impactful thought leadership and advocacy to improve healthcare delivery

• Deep understanding of debates around results-based financing (especially in healthcare) and different approaches to achieving these results
• Prior experience working in a fast-paced entrepreneurial setting, with flexibility and willingness to learn new skills quickly
• Strong relationship builder with the ability to find common ground, build consensus, and strengthen collaboration among diverse stakeholders
• Humility and personal stability. We are looking for passionate professionals that combine strong leadership skills with good humor and patience
• Creativity with strong problem-solving and analytical skills
• Ability to be an inspiring leader in a dynamic, multicultural, and values-based environment;
• Advanced degree (Master’s or Doctoral), preferably in public policy, economics, public administration, business, medicine, or public health.

We would prefer to have you based in East Africa, but are open to other locations with 25-30% travel.

Tell me more about Maisha Meds

• On a roll: Doubling year over year with recent funding partnerships announced for results-based financing and expansion into Uganda, Nigeria, and Tanzania
• Great team: Founded, managed and backed by successful veterans of Stanford School of Medicine, Google, SafeBoda, CHAI, and I&M Bank. We have technologists, clinicians, and economists working side by side to solve difficult problems.
• Great funders: We’re backed by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, USAID Development Innovation Ventures, CIFF, WHO FIND, and Pfizer to pay for healthcare on behalf of patients, with others to be announced soon.
• Huge market: Disrupting a massive, growing $50+ billion market for healthcare payments for low-income patients, with a focus on paying for health outcomes to ensure patients get better
• Great customers: Create incentives that ensure pharmacists and clinicians provide excellent care and pay them when this happens.
• Impact: A fun and exciting start-up culture that empowers its people to make a huge impact with the clinical trial results to show for it

We offer competitive salary and benefits, including health insurance, 401(k) / pension, PSLF, stock options, and sponsorship for work visas in Kenya.