Our mission is to contribute to lasting improvements in the lives of the world’s poorest
OUR APPROACH
Agility, impact, and cost-effectiveness
As an impact-driven foundation, we aim to be a trusted partner to governments and implementing organizations. We are a nimble team with the flexibility to invest in approaches that may lie outside the scope or mandate of other donors led by specific agendas. We make investments where they can have the most impact and co-design solutions to drive sustainability at scale. Our strengths lie in our agility, commitment to cost-effectiveness, and active engagement all the way from scoping to design to implementation.
While our current portfolio focuses on interventions in health, education, and nutrition, we are open to explore additional opportunities based on the potential for cost-effectiveness. We are committed to enabling healthy and productive lives. Therefore, our interventions and partnerships have generally targeted young children and women of childbearing age to allow for positive change across lifetimes and generations.
We are business-minded, impact-oriented entrepreneurs that utilize the power of data to inform our thinking when co-designing interventions with our partners. While we are based in the US, we are operating on the ground in Malawi and intending to expand to additional countries in Sub-Saharan Africa to stay geographically present where our work can have the most impact.
OUR STORY
We seek the most cost-effective ways to create impact for the world’s poorest. That means doing the right thing – and doing it right.
Our work started in 2008 in the Kwitanda catchment area of the Balaka district in Malawi. By working in cooperation with the Malawian government and local partners, we explored how to build a more resilient health system while maximizing long-term impact. Since then, we have continued to center our work around sustainable interventions and scalable solutions to improve access to health services, quality education and serve the people that need it the most.
Through our work we have seen that by assessing the relationship between cost and the impact of interventions, we can maximize our contribution and improve the lives of the world’s poorest. This approach helps us compare one potential intervention to another and informs how we get most impact out of the money invested. To us, this is not just being smart about how money is spent but being strategic and informed on how to serve most effectively those in need.
OUR TEAM
Fábio Couto
Strategy Manager
Fabio is a development strategist designing and delivering high-impact interventions for sustainable change. He is passionate about empowering people living in underprivileged conditions.
Coming from the private sector he was appointed by the World Food Programme to provide strategy and analytics advisory to the Ethiopian Agricultural Transformation Agency, and ran the Agricultural Commercialization Clusters, a $300M value-chain program strengthening food security and doubling the income of 4 million subsistence farmers.
Fabio has worked in Latin America, Europe and Africa, and holds an MBA from Saïd Business School at the University of Oxford.
Melanie Kavaler
Research Analyst
Melanie previously held a Chief of Staff position at a high-growth healthcare tech start-up company, as well as an Investment Banking Analyst position at Barclays. She is excited to synthesize her educational background in healthcare with her analytical and growth mindsets to provide comprehensive and quality resources to underserved populations.
Melanie is based in New York City, and holds a BA in the Biological Basis of Behavior, Health Services Management and Psychology from the University of Pennsylvania. Outside of work, Melanie’s favorite activities include playing tennis, cooking, and spending time with her family, friends and dog.
Jani Moliis
Strategy Manager
Jani is an expert in social value creation, with over 15 years of experience on improving the effectiveness and impact of organizations delivering value for citizens. He has worked for top-tier management consulting companies, such as McKinsey & Company, and for public sector organizations at the local, national and international levels. While employed at the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change, he worked for three years as a governance advisor for Rwanda’s Ministry of Finance and Economic Planning and Office of the President.
Jani’s hometown is Helsinki, Finland, where he has lived in the same neighborhood all his life, except for his years abroad living on four different continents. He holds a Master of Social Sciences degree from Helsinki University.
Benjamin Mukasa
Country Manager - Malawi
Benjamin is a development finance professional with leadership experience in private and public sector roles. He has professional experience in financial management with the US Embassy Kampala and large-scale program budgeting with USAID as well as commercial banking experience. As the inaugural Chief Executive Officer, he successfully led to the two-fold organic growth (over $14M) of SteadFin, a leading credit cooperative in East Africa. His management experience spans over 15 years in roles held in Uganda, Namibia, and the United States.
Benjamin holds a Master of Business Administration (MBA) from Edinburgh Business School, Heriot-Watt University. He is based in Malawi, and he enjoys exploring new places, riding, and reading.
Michael Park
Executive Director
Mike is a primary care physician and former management consultant with McKinsey & Company, where he served clients across the private, public, and social sectors in the United States, Europe, Africa, and Asia.
His previous work also includes helping to develop and launch the Access to Nutrition Index and establish the Aspen Management Partnership for Health. He holds a Master of Public Health from Harvard University.
Mike is based in Colorado, where he enjoys cycling, skiing, and hiking with his family.
Our Approach
Our strengths lie in our agile action, entrepreneurial problem solving, and active engagement from investment to design to implementation.
