Medic is excited to welcome Nekesa Were as our Director of Community, steering the growing global Community Health Toolkit (CHT) Community of Practice. Nekesa joins at a pivotal moment where the community is becoming increasingly diverse – encompassing new geographic regions, prioritizing new kinds of healthcare services, and identifying new ways to support care across a wide range of digital health interventions.
The cohort of international CHT collaborators includes high-impact local, regional, and global technical partners, IT teams within NGOs or ministries of health, for-profit software companies, and organisations exclusively building open-source software (OSS) for community health. Together, Medic and our partners are supporting over 40,000 community health workers with CHT-powered digital tools, representing 50+ projects across 15 countries in Africa and Asia.
Nekesa is a Nairobi-based leader with over a decade of expertise in building and supporting communities to develop innovative solutions – with a personal mission to transform societies while protecting dignity and impacting economies positively.
I am delighted to join Medic as the Director of Community. Everyday champions around the world work to bring dignity back to their communities by building appropriate and accessible tools. I am excited to partner with them to design, build and implement tools that transform lives by working towards a world where health is a secured human right.
Nekesa Were
As a visionary mentor and expert at building communities, Nekesa will focus on bolstering NGOs, technical organizations, and social enterprises to increase the global capacity for building on the CHT – bringing together digital health allies and maximizing their potential to contribute to a new model of care, where quality, timely, and equitable health services happen right at the doorstep and are enhanced by digital technology.
Prior to Medic, Nekesa was the Director of Strategy at AfriLabs, a Pan African network of innovation hubs where she led the planning and execution of AfriLabs’ strategy to consistently elevate innovators across the African continent. Nekesa was also the CEO at iHub, one of Kenya’s first innovation hubs, where she championed an open innovation culture that was integral in ensuring quick maturity of Kenya’s innovation ecosystem. She is also passionate about mentoring and supporting upcoming women in the technology field.
Please join us in welcoming Nekesa!