Following the example of our first two cohorts – Disaster Management and Climate Resilience – the CTO Now Go Build Fellowship welcomes seven new fellows to tackle a very important challenge: healthcare.
The intersection of health and technology is very important to me. Before I started building distributed systems, I was a radiologist at Antoni van Leeuwenhoek Hospital in the Netherlands. I worked alongside passionate doctors who stayed up late into the night, knowing that any unfinished business meant patients would have to wait another day for life-saving diagnoses. One colleague, Frank, kept telling me that my skills would be better used in construction technology that could help people in a big way. The transition wasn’t as drastic as you might imagine, it turns out, in both areas the most important problems are human problems.
In both healthcare and technology, I’ve learned that innovation means little if it can’t reach the people who need it most. The most advanced imaging technology means nothing if patients don’t have access to it. The best diagnostic tools in the world are useless if they sit in hospitals where people can’t get to them, or if the results can’t be interpreted quickly enough to intervene and provide care. When you’re building solutions in resource-constrained places, you can’t just scale patterns that work in well-funded areas—you have to think about everything differently.
This bunch of Fellows got it. They work in environments where you can’t always count on reliable connectivity, where economic realities influence every decision, where patients can be days away from the nearest clinic. And instead of seeing them as limitations, they use them as limitations to a proposal to overhaul health care and services from the ground up. For example, providing important maternal health information to remote populations without smartphones, or using standard messaging platforms to expand mental health services in areas lacking professional resources. These Fellows prove that the most effective solutions emerge when technology is shaped by the communities that use it.
I would like to introduce the latest batch of CTO Fellows Now Go Build (in their own words).
Based in: Abuja, Nigeria
I’ve spent the last eight years turning adversity into action and creating technology solutions that bring healthcare to the front lines of crisis. As co-founder of Parker’s Mobile Clinic, I led a team that reached more than 150,000 people in flood-affected and underserved communities using AI-powered telemedicine and mobile outreach to close deadly gaps in care. As the Executive Director of ITIS, I help train the next generation of African innovators to use AI and digital tools for social change. I see the AWS CTO Fellowship as a springboard for scaling resilient systems, honing my technical leadership, and boldly rethinking what’s possible for communities that are often left behind.
Based in: Orlando, FL, USA
As Chief Technology Officer at US Hunger, I lead the adoption of cloud and AI-driven solutions as part of our mission to connect the nation’s food assistance, social care and health care. I am committed to our vision of “Feeding families today and uniting them for a healthier tomorrow” and ensuring that every emergency food intervention is paired with strategies to identify and address the SDOH gaps that are the root causes of food insecurity. Our food-as-a-gateway platforms provide actionable real-time statistics and metrics to connect families with welfare benefits, empower organizations and agencies to gain a 360-degree understanding of the people we serve, and prevent billions in aid from going unclaimed. I am grateful for the opportunity this Fellowship provides to advance this mission.
Based in: Minneapolis, MN, USA
I lead NextGenU.org’s mission to make quality education a global public good. Our AWS-based platform provides free health and STEM education to over 600,000 students worldwide, from training over 100,000 health workers in the Democratic Republic of the Congo to teaching science and math to 10,000 children in West and Central Africa. We create learning materials in collaboration with major UN agencies, universities, hospital systems and international educational partners.
We recently developed 52 textbooks, workbooks and teacher guides in multiple languages in three countries, along with professional development and field research at a fraction of the typical costs in the development sector. We are now building the Intelligent Textbook Machine (ITM), an AI-powered platform that extends this approach and facilitates the development of high-quality localized learning materials for every teacher and child. I am grateful for the opportunity to join the Now Go Build CTO Fellowship and look forward to strengthening the AWS technical leadership and expertise needed to scale this innovation and improve access to education around the world.
Based in: California, USA
I grew up in a remote village in South India; our family had little more than enough to eat. I was lucky enough to earn a degree and pursue my dreams – opportunities that are still out of reach for many children from my village today. This contrast shaped my purpose: to help ensure that every child—regardless of gender, geographic, or socioeconomic background—has a fair chance to live the life they choose. Technology is my forte and I believe it can be a powerful equalizer when applied with intention.
At Piramal Foundation, we work with government departments to help them adopt digital technologies and artificial intelligence to improve public service delivery – across health, education and other sectors – by increasing institutional capacity and data-driven decision-making. We support the use of open source digital public goods, strong public-private partnerships and robust governance frameworks to make digital transformation programs effective and sustainable.
I’m excited to join the Now Go Build Fellowship to engage with fellow technologists from around the world who are also using their skills for social impact – and to learn from their journeys.
Based in: Raleigh, NC, USA
Our Wave was founded to build digital healing and support spaces for survivors of sexual abuse, domestic violence and child abuse – a healthcare crisis that affects 1 in 3 women and 1 in 6 men globally. As CTO, my team and I combine clinical research in trauma-informed healing techniques with cutting-edge artificial intelligence to pioneer mental health care platforms for survivors. To date, we have supported survivors in 70 countries using the power of scalable cloud computing, helping us reach survivors of disability often overlooked by traditional services. This fellowship provides an incredible opportunity to collaborate with other innovators for social good and further hone my leadership skills to further our mission.
Based in: Harare, Zimbabwe
I’m Sandra Muzambi and I work at the intersection of community mental health and digital innovation. My focus is on using technology to streamline data collection and feedback systems for initiatives like Friendship Bench Zimbabwe, helping us better understand and serve our clients. I tackle the challenges of data interoperability, scaling human-centric AI, turning raw data into actionable insights, and aligning efforts across regional teams by building tools that are scalable and locally based. The fellowship will help me refine these solutions with global insights, connect me with colleagues who are solving similar challenges in their own contexts, and support my goal of increasing impact with smarter and more inclusive technologies.
Based in: Kenya
As Chief Technology Officer at Jacaranda Health, I am driven by the belief that no mother or child should be left behind. My work focuses on harnessing the power of artificial intelligence to bridge critical gaps in maternal and newborn health care across sub-Saharan Africa.
I have had the privilege of leading an incredible team to develop game-changing tools such as UlizaLlama, the first open LLM for five African languages, and UlizaMAMA, an AI platform that provides important health information to mothers in their own language. These tools have empowered millions of women to take a more active role in maternal health and equip them with the knowledge needed to navigate pregnancy and birth more safely.
I am delighted to join the Now Go Build CTO Fellowship to work with other purposeful leaders to accelerate our mission to ensure a healthy future for every mother and child.
The new Now Go Build series is on the way
It is hard to believe that the first anniversary of the Fellowship is approaching. Over the past year, I have had the privilege of working closely with our inaugural members on disaster management and climate resilience, and their work has been inspiring. And I’m excited to share their stories with the launch of the new Now Go Build series in the coming weeks.
Now go build!