We are at an inflection point for our work advancing global health equity. Half of the world’s population still lacks access to the care they need, but we see a path forward that combines health system strengthening, creative system redesign, collective action, and human-centered application of technology to support equitable care. Medic’s next phase will build on a decade of effort alongside health workers and families in Africa and Asia. We are open-sourcing our tools and resources as core components of the Community Health Toolkit (CHT), distributing our expertise to local solution providers, and carrying out R&D to move the field forward.
In order to succeed in this next phase, our organization is evolving. Importantly, this includes our Board of Directors, who provide strategic guidance, carry out fiduciary duties, and ensure long-term organizational health. I am thrilled to welcome three new directors to Medic’s board, including:
Robin Bruce, President, David Weekley Family Foundation
Robin Bruce serves as President of the David Weekley Family Foundation where she’s honored to partner with exemplary entrepreneurs confronting the greatest challenges of our day. Prior to joining DWFF in 2017, Robin spent four years as the CEO of the Acton School of Business, an award-winning entrepreneurial MBA in Austin, Texas. In her role, Robin had the privilege of walking alongside extraordinary individuals in their journey to become principled entrepreneurs. Robin holds an MBA from The Acton School of Business and a B.A. from Vanderbilt University. She received Texas Business Hall of Fame’s 2010 Award for entrepreneurial achievement.
Raffi Krikorian, Managing Director for Engineering, Emerson Collective
In Raffi’s words, “Technology has the potential of helping make the world a better place – and its not by building small apps, but really trying to help accelerate some of the good work in the world.” Raffi is the former CTO of the Democratic National Committee, where he worked to make sure every campaign, up and down the ballot, could have industry-quality technology and analytics tools to help them talk to voters on topics that engage them, and on mediums that they prefer. Before that, Raffi was in charge of Uber’s Advanced Technologies Center, and was responsible for the launch of the first ever passenger-carrying self-driving fleet in September of 2016 into Pittsburgh, PA.
Before Uber, Raffi was a VP of Engineering at Twitter where he was directly responsible for performance, reliability, and efficiency. His team built everything from the custom storage engines, to the compute and scheduling engines that ran in the datacenters, to the APIs that power the third party ecosystem as well as the Twitter clients. During the World Cup of 2010, Twitter was down repeatedly due to load; during the World Cup of 2014, Twitter survived record traffic with 99.99% uptime.
Naveen Rao, MD, Senior Vice President, Health, The Rockefeller Foundation
Dr. Naveen Rao is Senior Vice President of the Health Initiative at The Rockefeller Foundation. He leads a team focused on advancing Precision Public Health, which empowers community health workers with actionable insights from data and analytic tools to accelerate progress on health outcomes in their communities. Launched in September 2019, the Precision Public Health initiative builds off the Foundation’s legacy on Universal Health Coverage to ensure that communities everywhere receive the right care at the right time.
For decades, Dr. Rao has been a leader in equipping health care providers with the skills, tools, and technologies they need to succeed. He comes to the Foundation after a 25-year career with Merck & Co., Inc., where he most recently led Merck for Mothers, the company’s 10-year, $500 million initiative to reduce maternal mortality around the world. In this capacity, Dr. Rao was responsible for leveraging the company’s science and business expertise to accelerate progress in reaching the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals and advancing the company’s mission to improve and save lives.
“We are thrilled to have Robin, Raffi and Naveen join our board,” said current board chair, Greg Ennis. “Their unique perspective, experience, and leadership will benefit Medic as we enter our next phase of advancing global health equity.”
As a final update, after nine years of service, Roni Zeiger will step off the board and transition into an advisory role, joining Susan Nesbitt as an Emeritus member. We are deeply grateful for Roni’s patient-centered, community-oriented guidance and contributions. I am excited for the work we’ll do together in the future. “I look forward to working more closely with the product team in my new advisory role”, said Roni. “The opportunity for impact in the coming decade is awesome.”