Chief Strategy Officer

Maisha Meds is hiring! We’re looking for a visionary leader and stellar strategist 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 2.5million patient encounters annually across Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, Nigeria, and Zambia with our suite of software products.  We are building the financial and technology infrastructure to enable global health funders to pay for health outcomes at the last mile, with a focus on malaria case management (and results from a RCT with UC Berkeley due out later this year), injectable contraceptives, prenatal care, HIV pre-exposure prophylaxis, and COVID testing and vaccination.

We use data from our point of sale software to design programs that leverage financial incentives to improve uptake of high impact health products.  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.  And we work with a mix of leading global health funders, pharmaceutical companies, and ministries of health to make this happen.

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.  But building these programs will require a paradigm shift from larger global health funders.  Achieving this will require us to:

  • Develop experimental proof-of-concepts with a variety of partners and scale those with most potential
  • Collaborate closely with groups like USAID, Global Fund, GAVI, UNFPA, and program-related investment teams to structure deals
  • Expand our data sales and medication e-commerce business units, with a goal of driving overall organizational sustainability

We are looking for a leader with experience in thought leadership, outcomes financing, and pharma business expansion who is keen to lead an interdisciplinary team focused on research, commercial viability, and global health funder engagement. This includes:

Lead global health strategy and business development, with a focus on paying for outcomes: You will help us to structure results-based financing deals to help pay for healthcare outcomes for millions of patients.  This work will include:

  • Helping us structure results-based financing contracts with large-scale global health funders, including understanding whether to partner or build an outcomes fund in-house and closing deals worth upwards of $25M annually within the next 2 years
  • Working with research and operations team to build A/B testing framework to help design programs cost-effectively for new geographies
  • Leading dissemination activities to build norms around paying for outcomes, including developing the evidence base to help multilateral funders build outcomes financing into their core budgets and replenishment requests

Lead commercial strategy and revenue activities: You will own the P&L and strategy for our e-commerce business (currently profitable with $2mil+ in annualized revenue) and our data sales business (with line of site to $1mil+ in commercial contracts annually to fund pharmacy network expansion), help us decide how to focus these efforts going forward, including optimal business structure and targets.  This may also include a capital raise or sale of self-sufficient business units to help us focus further.  This will include:

  • Work with our head of new business to “productize” our data insights operations.  Build systems to achieve subscriptions and recurring revenue and deepen our value proposition with manufacturers and wholesalers
  • Oversee the new GM of our reorder business to strengthen our value proposition with pharmacies, including developing trade finance partnerships and standardizing marketing activities; recommend whether to spin this off and/or how we might design a joint venture with a commercial partner
  • Work with CEO to structure financing to enable us to be smarter with funds than we are currently – we now use grant funding for our entire business, but may raise debt or equity to fund our expansion (depending on revenue and CAC / LTV projections)

Oversee external communications, research activities, and scale 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 deliver on the promise of scale with this model.  This will include:

  • Leading engagement with UChicago’s Development Innovation Lab, UC Berkeley, KEMRI, and other partners to answer questions related to healthcare delivery, incentives design, and market intelligence
  • Developing scale partnerships in Uganda, Nigeria, and elsewhere to enable claims processing and incentive delivery at scale, with a goal of building a network of 100,000 health facilities using our software in 5 years
  • Overseeing communications manager to provide regular compelling touchpoints for conveying information about us externally

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 strong alignment with our vision and mission
  • Record of building funding partnerships and innovative finance models with governments, multilateral funders, and private foundations
  • Experience and comfort owning a P&L and strategy for profitable pharma business units
  • Creativity with strong problem-solving and analytical skills
  • Record of impactful thought leadership and advocacy to improve healthcare delivery
  • Experience in a fast-paced entrepreneurial setting and/or in management consulting
  • Humility and personal stability. We are looking for passionate professionals that combine strong leadership skills with humor and patience
  • Interest in serving as 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 also open to Washington DC or London as well.

Tell me more about Maisha Meds

  • On a roll: Doubling year over year with new funding partnerships soon to be announced and recent expansion into Uganda, Nigeria, and Ethiopia
  • Great team: Founded, managed and backed by successful veterans of Stanford School of Medicine, Google, mPharma, 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 our nurses, 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.

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

Apply here!