Meet Dimagi
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Dimagi Boston
Jonathan Jackson
Founder & Chief Executive Officer
Jonathan Jackson is a social entrepreneur and innovator with extensive mobile technology expertise in both low-income and high-income settings. He has co-founded multiple organizations focused on improvement heatlhcare and poverty alleviation globally.
As cofounder and CEO of Dimagi Jonathan has overseen the growth of the company from just the founding team to over 60 world-wide employees. He made an uncompromising commitment to open source software and developed a highly interactive collaborative culture that fosters partnerships across academics, philanthropists, and implementers.
Jonathan has overseen the development of multiple innovative health projects, including CommCare, the leading mobile case management solution for community healthcare workers, and CommTrack, a last-mile logistics platform deployed nationally in multiple countries.
Jonathan earned bachelors and masters degrees in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from the MIT. Jonathan also co-founded Cogito Corp, a pioneering behavioral analytics company. He is also a visiting scientist at Brigham and Women's Hospital Decision Systems Group, and a lecturer at the Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology.
Dr. Vikram Sheel Kumar
Founder & Chief Medical Officer
Vikram Sheel Kumar is an engineer and pathologist who developed one of the earliest video games for health on a wireless mobile device. He studied engineering at the Indian Institute of Technology and Columbia University and medicine at the Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology. Vikram completed a residency in Clinical Pathology from the Brigham &Women's Hospital in 2007.
The son of an inventive neurosurgeon, Vikram invented a privatizing fax machine with his father at the age of 14. As an undergraduate in the laboratory of Dr. Rafael Yuste, he developed a software toolkit to analyze multidimensional neuronal data. Vikram did his graduate thesis at the MIT Media Laboratory where with his advisor Dr. Sandy Pentland he invented DiaBetNet that was nominated as one of the top ten designs of the decade by BusinessWorld magazine. Vikram is also a co-founder of Cogito Health.
At Dimagi, Vikram leads research activities and overseas the operations of the India office. Vikram has won numerous awards including being named an MIT Technology Review's TR100 and its Humanitarian of the Year, a Paul E. Strandjord Young Investigator, and a Paul and Daisy Soros New American. Along with Jon, he was named a 2012 Social Entrepreneur Awardee by the Schwab Foundation at the World Economic Forum’s Annual Meeting of New Champions. Vikram has been featured in the New York Times, Nature Medicine, the Voice of America and on the cover of The Week magazine. He is a consulting editor for Forbes Life India and co-writes a quarterly column on emerging technology for Clinical Chemistry.
Cory Zue
Chief Technology Officer
Cory Zue has expertise in many aspects of software engineering. As a graduate student working at MIT’s Lincoln Laboratory, he developed an automated voice over IP traffic generator. This tool was used to assess the effects of digital security on voice over IP conversation quality. He used this research to develop a model for predicting the cost of encrypting voice in poor-connectivity systems in terms of quality loss.
From 2005 to 2006, Cory worked for Oracle Corporation developing enterprise collaboration software. He designed and implemented an architecture to automatically track changes on any artifact in the system, allowing users to immediately access those documents that were important to them in a highly-efficient manner.
Cory earned his bachelors and masters degrees in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Dr. Neal Lesh
Chief Strategy Officer
Neal Lesh is a computer scientist with field experience in applying information technologies to help organizations address poverty in low-income regions. He has published and lectured extensively in data visualization, data mining, and automated planning and logistics. He has developed medical record and analysis systems for Partners in Health, the government of Rwanda, and a large AIDS treatment program in Tanzania, and worked with many other Universities and NGOs. He is coordinating a Harvard-funded research project in South Africa.
Neal holds a PhD in computer science from the University of Washington and a masters degree in global health from the Harvard School of Public Health.
Carter Powers
Chief Operations Officer
Carter Powers manages the business operations at Dimagi, and is responsible for everything that happens behind the scenes to keep Dimagi up and running smoothly. Although trained in Computer Science, he won't be touching any code at Dimagi, though his extremely complicated spreadsheets are unrivaled in the organization. His CS degree allows him to keep close tabs on Dimagi’s core products and also allows him to participate in our development team’s lunch conversations, and the developers have really enjoyed learning how to make excel macros under his tutelage.
Carter is likely the only one at Dimagi that feels comfortable wearing a suit, and he has spent majority of his professional life working in management consulting and finance with Oliver Wyman, with a focus in Financial Services, Banking, and Risk management. It was here that Carter learned how to manage books and crunch numbers. He also got a taste for travel while serving on multiple international projects including extended stints across North America, Africa, Asia, Europe, and Middle East.
Prior to joining Dimagi, Carter was a Senior Assoicate at ideas42,a Harvard-based think tank applying behavioral economics to design financial products for the poor. Carter is passionate about data-driven business decisions, and brings an academic rigor towards evaluating the impact of our products to Dimagi.
Carter holds a Bachelor's degree from MIT, and his lifelong dreams are to take a motorcycle tour of the world, and discover a way to never have to decide what to eat for lunch again.
Dan Myung
VP of Development & Operations
Dan Myung is an engineer with a keen interest in developing expressive, interoperable and portable software systems specifically in the health care realm. Dan holds an ideal that there are social and societal ills that are waiting to be solved through the help of better, accessible software. Prior to joining Dimagi, Dan worked 5 years as lead developer and co-founder of 10Blade, a startup specializing in developing electronic medical records and decision systems for EMS, first responder, and critical care personnel.
At 10Blade, Dan developed alongside Harvard University's Department of Computer Science the world's first low powered wireless pulse oximeter running on a TinyOS based device. This led to new explorations in developing innovative new decision-support systems for the pre-hospital phase of emergency care, as well as provide critical feedback to health informatics standards bodies the need to expand existing standards' documentation of pre-hospital data. For Boston Medical Center, Dan provided 10Blade's electronic point of care charge capture for selected Trauma surgeons, greatly increasing billing revenue and providing a more continuous record for further research.
Dan holds an AB in Computer Science from Harvard University.
Rowena Luk
VP of Strategy
Rowena Luk is an engineer with a passion for developing robust, usable, and re-usable technologies to support international development in underserved regions around the world.
In collaboration with Intel Research, she led both front-end and back-end development of a telemedicine platform running on a distributed network of intermittently connected servers located throughout Ghana and the US. In so doing, she took this project from an idea to deployment in 5 major hospitals involving over 125 doctors from around the world. She has also conducted research with the Tetherless Computing Lab at the University of Waterloo on drive-by internet solutions for kiosk operators in India. Her technical background includes several years' experience working as a software engineer for industry-leading companies such as Research In Motion and Maya Heat Transfer Technologies.
Rowena is founder of AMITA Telemedicine Inc., a charity whose mission is to improve the quality of healthcare in Africa through research, development, and deployments of information technology. She sits on the Board of Advisors for Gram-Vaani, a non-profit providing media services through low-cost connectivity in rural India, winner of the prestigious Knight News Challenge.
She holds a Masters in Information Management and Systems from the University of California in Berkeley, where she was an active member of the Technology and Infrastructure for Emerging Regions (TIER) Research Group, and an undergraduate degree in Computer Engineering from the University of Waterloo in Canada.
Danny Roberts
Senior Engineer
Danny Roberts is a strong believer in applying his general life principle of being nice and having fun to software engineering. A Boston-area native and half-Brazilian, Danny's interest in the world led him to study a number of languages which he speaks to various degrees of proficiency including Portuguese, Latin, German, Chinese, Romanian, and Ancient Greek.
Danny graduated from Princeton University in 2010 with a Bachelor of Science and Engineering degree in Computer Science. While at Princeton, he became interested in web development as a way to "be the change you want to see in the world" after working on a few web projects. Danny joined Dimagi in 2010 to improve his knowledge of geography, to use what he knows to be the change he wants to see in the world, and of course to be nice and have fun.
Biyeun Buczyk
Senior Engineer
Biyeun Buczyk is an engineer who is passionate about improving user experience and creating reusable, thoughtful code. She hates the idea of having a normal 'desk job' and thinks that the world would be a better place if everyone truly enjoyed and cared about their work. Outside of computer science, Biyeun has a strong background in visual arts, with interests in graphic design and photography.
Biyeun graduated in 2010 with an S.B. degree in Physics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Drew Roos
Senior Engineer
Drew is an engineer who has long experience in the medical field. Prior to Dimagi, he developed EMRs for Epic Systems in Madison, WI. At Epic, he built operating room, anesthesia, and inpatient/outpatient integration systems for large hospitals and clinics across the country.
Since joining Dimagi, Drew has been a key contributor to JavaRosa, an open source data collection and decision support platform for mobile devices. He has lead integration of contributions from remote partners, provided programming mentorship, local training, and traveled extensively in the field. Drew also has a strong interest in geo-spatial applications.
Drew Roos holds a BS in Computer Science from the Georgia Institute of Technology.
Clayton Sims
Senior Engineer
Clayton Sims is a keen engineer with a breadth of experience in developing usable software systems. Clayton strongly adheres to the principle that software can do big things only if it is written along side, and tailored for, those who use it. At the Advanced Materials Laboratory division of Sandia National Labs, he led portions of development on multiple software solutions for use in materials science. Working side-by-side with materials engineers, he helped to create CAD/CAM software for a 3D prototyping technology selected as one the top ten materials developments by Chemical Engineering News.
Recently, Clayton has worked with MIT Engineers and Harvard University Economists to create a toolkit for economists to create highly scalable internet based game simulations. He is currently pursuing a Masters Degree in Computer Science and Engineering at MIT's User Interface Design group, developing software systems to enable end-users to generate electronic decision support protocols.
Clayton holds a BS in Computer Science and Engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Will Pride
Engineer
After finding previous summer internships in both finance and academia unfulfilling Will came to Dimagi for an environment where he could grow as an engineer while making a real impact on the product and end-user. His collegiate research work centered on machine learning, natural language processing, and fraternity life. Will hopes to incorporate aspects of these technologies into Dimagi in the near future. He joined the mobile team in July 2012 to help with the development of Commcare ODK and Javarosa.
Will graduated in May 2012 from Cornell University with a B.A. in Computer Science.
Onyedikachi "Yedi" Anyansi
Engineer
Yedi Anyansi is a technology enthusiast who wholeheartedly believes that everyone should do their part to make the world a better place. He actively builds web applications in his spare time and has done pro-bono web development work for non-profits Seven Hills Global Outreach and Guatemala-based ASODILL.
Yedi is excited to join Dimagi because of their devotion to helping those less fortunate than them through the innovative use of emerging technologies. At Dimagi, Yedi hopes to improve his programming abilities, learn more about the issues plaguing developing countries, and use his skills to have a positive impact on the lives of others.
Mike White
Engineer
Mike is a software craftsman who enjoys building abstractions that empower both fellow technologists and end-users to do what they want faster. He hopes to use his privilege to help others and solve important problems.
Mike loves that all of Dimagi's code is open source and hopes this will eventually be the norm. He thinks open source is great because it promotes interdependence without forcing it on anyone.
Before Dimagi, while obtaining a BS in Computer Science from Tufts University, Mike co-founded GetchaBooks, a site that makes buying college textbooks slightly less painful. He occasionally cultivates interests in music, philosophy, linguistics, artificial intelligence, and sustainable agriculture.
Kenn Knowles
Senior Engineer
Kenn Knowles is a friendly programming polyglot bringing academic expertise in programming languages to every aspect of information technology, including mobile apps, highly distributed cloud architectures, award-winning data visualizations, advanced type systems, and experimental programming languages. In software, Kenn shares Dijkstra's conviction that elegance is not a luxury but the difference between success and failure. His primary ambition as a computer scientist and engineer is to find new and better ways to be of service.
Kenn recently directed analytics at Inkling, a company developing premium interactive learning content, as well as contributing broadly to the development of their cloud-based platform. Before that, he led Cityspan's engineering team in building their principal product Youthservices.net, a data collection and reporting platform for youth service providers.
Kenn got his first guitar the same year he wrote his first program, and is always up to jam. Kenn's preferred mode of travel is wandering, and his preferred vehicle is the bicycle.
Kenn holds a BS in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from the University of California, Berkeley, and an MS in Computer Science from the University of California, Santa Cruz.
Tyler Wymer
Engineer
Tyler is a software artisan who believes in writing pretty code, enjoying ones work and hammocks. He spent the early years of his post-college career doing Ruby on Rails software consulting but fled this life and Ohio to join the team at Dimagi. With this change he is looking forward to using his experience building quality software to be able to make a difference in peoples lives.
Tyler is a graduate of Computer Science & Engineering from Ohio State University. When not in front of a keyboard he is most likely found on his bicycle(s).
Amelia Sagoff
Senior Field Manager
Amelia has helped develop and field test CommCare applications in Tanzania with Dimagi. Before joining Dimagi, she worked for Elysium Digital LLC, a technology litigation consulting firm that specializes in analyzing and explaining the technical aspects of copyright, patent, and trade secret cases. She graduated from Harvard College with a BA in Computer Science.
Giovanni Capalbo
Engineer
Giovanni is an engineer who believes in creating and using technology to make a positive difference in the world, and he enjoys coming up with creative solutions to solve real-world problems.
Prior to joining Dimagi, Giovanni worked as a developer at a financial services company where his job was primarily in data warehousing. He has a B.S. in Computer Science from Trinity College.
Nick Amland
Senior Analyst
Nick leads the Active Data Management initiative and supports CommCare implementations. He started as a field fellow with Dimagi in January 2011.
Previously, Nick worked at VillageReach, a hybrid social enterprise working to improve the access of health services to remote, under-served communities. At VillageReach, Nick primarily worked in the information systems group and dedicated most of his time to building/deploying a logistics management information system (openLMIS.org) in Mozambique. Nick graduated from the University of Puget Sound with a B.A. in both Business Administration and Economics.
Jeremy Wacksman
Program Analyst
Jeremy joins the Dimagi team with a mixture of experiences in biology, agriculture, and health. He is excited to be learning about the role mobile technology can play in improving public health communication and health outcomes. Prior to joining Dimagi he worked as an emerging technologies analyst for the U.S. Navy, a medical research assistant at a teaching hospital, and a farmer on a small family farm. Jeremy has a B.S. in biology from the College of William and Mary in Virginia, and has studied in both India and Turkey.
Arya Shekar
Manager, Legal Strategy and Operations
Arya Shekar is a lawyer who comes to Dimagi with a passion for finding creative solutions to social problems. She has represented artists, immigrants, and companies in a variety of Intellectual Property, Immigration, and Corporate matters, both within the U.S. and abroad in Central America and Europe. At Dimagi, she will be primarily responsible for overseeing legal strategy.
Arya loves to travel, perform Indian classical dance, and sometimes, do both at the same time. She believes that travel and dance are important forms of education.
Arya holds a B.A. with Honors in English Literature from Brown University, and a J.D. from Boston University School of Law.
Gillian Javetski
Program Analyst
Gillian plays a variety of roles at Dimagi within business development, project management, developing research materials, and field work. She has conducted research at a number of organizations that work to expand IT access in developing countries, including One Laptop Per Child, the United Nations Development Programme, and Lifeline Energy.
Gillian received a Masters in Public Health from Tufts University School of Medicine where she wrote her thesis on designing a framework to describe maternal, newborn, and child health data collection instruments for the Maternal Concept Lab. She holds a B.A. in International Relations and Community Health from Tufts University.
Vanessa Lee Raymond
Office Manager
Vanessa comes to Dimagi from Peace Corps Bulgaria where she had the privilege of teaching 8th graders English, working on mobile health outreach for urban drug addicts, helping with startup operations for the first Bulgarian Food Bank, and other youth and community development projects. She was also involved with some LGBTQ activism and diversity training, and generally busied herself continuing dialogues about equality and human rights.
Prior to her three year service in Bulgaria Vanessa worked in the music industry in NYC administering tours and festivals for the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra with Wynton Marsalis as well as smaller jazz and American roots ensembles, and programming for Dizzy's Club Coca Cola.
Vanessa has lived in Saudi Arabia, American Samoa, and Bulgaria. She has BA from Hampshire College in Jazz Cultures, loves kitty cats, tea, and classic detective novels.
Mike O'Donnell
Program Analyst
Mike is spearheading Dimagi’s initiative to implement CommCare as a tool for organizations working in the agricultural domain. Before coming to Dimagi, he worked as an agricultural extension agent with the Peace Corps in Togo.
During his two years with the Peace Corps he worked with farming cooperatives in his community to create bio-intensive gardens for dry season production, collaborated with a woman’s group to promote nutrition and maternal health, mobilized local farmers to adopt agroforestry techniques in their fields, and edited Farm to Market the highly acclaimed Peace Corps Togo agricultural publication. His experience has afforded him firsthand knowledge of the challenges and realities agricultural workers face in the field.
In 2009, Mike graduated from Washington University in St. Louis with a BA in Anthropology and English. In 2012, he pursued his academic interest while working as a research assistant to Dr. Norma Ware, a medical anthropologist renowned for her qualitative work on HIV treatment delivery in Tanzania, Uganda, and Nigeria. As a research assistant based in Boston, he focused largely on data reduction and analysis.
Hannah Mulvey
Intern
Hannah is Dimagi’s summer intern who will be working with Gillian Javetski in business development. She is a current student at Boston College and is majoring in Economics with a minor in International Studies. She is also a member of the varsity field hockey team. After spending a summer promoting higher education through athletics in Vietnam with the organization Coach for College, Hannah began refining her educational path towards understanding developing economies. She is passionate about global health care and hopes to continue her work towards improving health care systems in under-served communities after she graduates.Dimagi India
Matt Theis
Country Director, India
Matt brings an unique perspective to Dimagi, having previous engineering and program management experience in the aerospace industry. Prior to joining Dimagi, Matt focused on the development of a full-sized, unmanned helicopter. He has hands-on experience with hardware, testing and evaluation. He has developed a general appreciation for fixing whatever breaks, be it software, mechanical or electrical.
Matt holds a Bachelors degree in Aerospace and Aeronautical Engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Krishna Swamy
Director of Operations, India
Krishna has been supporting Dimagi’s work in India since 2011 out of New Delhi. He loves getting things done – and is motivated to do so by his exceptionally talented and interesting colleagues. Previously Krishna managed operations at Community Lab, a startup development organization in New York, where he gained an appreciation for interdisciplinary approaches to development.
Krishna completed his undergraduate studies in History at New York University, where he was a member of the South Asian Studies Program Initiative and helped organize the first annual Global South Asia Conference. He is a student of the tabla and tries his best to practice every day.
Stella Luk
Deputy Country Director, India
Stella Luk is a computer scientist, international lawyer, road warrior, and jack of all trades. She has developed Internet Tools for IBM, provided project management and M&E support to an inter-governmental anti-corruption project in Ukraine, represented Horn of Africa refugees in their asylum claims to UNHCR, prosecuted drug crimes for the Government of Canada, and conducted surveys for the World Bank. The unifying thread in her various exploits is an interest in technical knowledge and how it can be applied towards human well-being. Stella has a B.Sc. in Computing Science from the University of Alberta, an M.A. in International Relations from the University of Toronto, and a J.D., also from the University of Toronto.
In her latest incarnation, Stella will be representing Dimagi in Benin. There, she will work with partner organizations to explore and expand how mobile technology can contribute to the good work they are doing in the world.
Mohini Bhavsar
Senior Field Manager
Mohini is an adventurista, who loves backpacking, learning languages, ethnic outfits and sharing her grandmother's Indian recipes with hosts she meets along the way. She has lived in Germany and Guatemala, and speaks French, Spanish, some German and Hindi.
Mohini is interested evaluating the use of mobile tech to support and strengthen health systems in Latin America and South Asia. In 2010, she helped MobileActive.org to build a research directory for practitioners, and NGOs looking to learn more about applying mobile phones for social change. After New York, she headed south to support TulaSalud, a Guatemalan NGO using mobile data collection tools to monitor diseases in the remote highlands of Altaverapaz. Now, Mohini is working in India as a Field Fellow with Dimagi, deploying CommCare in partnership with several health NGOs around the country.
Mohini studied Biochemistry and Health Studies at McMaster University, in Hamilton, Ontario. She has worked for Health Canada's risk management and regulatory affairs directorate for natural health products; and University of Leipzig and Helmholtz Research Center in Leipzig, Germany.
Sri Ranganathan
Field Manager
Sri is a travel fanatic and loves road trips, train journeys and most of all likes to experince different styles of street food. Sri grew up in the IT capital of India, Bangalore and completed his Bachelors in Business Management. Throughout his college life, he has worked on various social sector projects and was responsible for conducting various donation camps on campus. On graduating, his strong passion for the development sector led him to take up the Grassroutes rural fellowship program where-in he worked with traditional artisans from rural Kerala to help promote their products online and create an alternate revenue stream. Inspired by his observations on development, he took up a full time position as Program Manager at Grassroutes for 2 years and traveled across India to work with over 25 rural based NGOs on designing projects, volunteer management and post fellowship impact assessment.
At Dimagi, as Field Implementer, he has loved every bit of travel across villages and especially enjoys the bycycle rides. He wishes to use his experience to drive Dimagi's on field presence and help foster stronger relationships with the community we serve. In the long run, he wishes to play an important role in Impact Assessment and Business Development.
Devika Sarin
Development Associate
Devika is driven by an interest in understanding international development at the grassroots level and the role of technology in bringing about change. Growing up, she lived in various cities across the length and breadth of India, including Mumbai, Delhi, Bangalore, Udaipur, Baroda and Hyderabad. Having returned, she is now keen to explore the “real” India - villages and rural areas that make up over seventy percent of the country.
Prior to joining Dimagi, Devika spent two years working in economic consulting, in the Securities & Finance practice at National Economic Research Associates (NERA), part of the Oliver Wyman Group in New York. In addition to working in finance, she also has a wide range of past work experiences which include research on effective team leadership at Harvard, co-founding Roshni, a non-profit to fund scholarships for underprivileged girls, and fundraising & business development for two Indian NGOs.
Devika studied at Franklin & Marshall College & Oxford University and has a double major in Business and Psychology, along with a minor in Computer Science.
Sheel Shah
Project Manager
Sheel is passionate about international development and interested in exploring the role that technology can play within the space. He is a Project Manager based out of India, doing whatever is necessary to keep our projects moving forward.
He brings a wide range of experience to Dimagi - he has spent time working at Microsoft as a program manager, hospitals in Canada working on prostate and lung cancer research and the manufacturing and telecommunication industries in business and technical roles. He holds a degree in Systems Design Engineering from the University of Waterloo.
Nisha Mohamed
Research Fellow
Nisha is an internal research fellow at Dimagi. Her work involves coordinating research on the use and impact of CommCare at deployment sites throughout India. She is interested in studying how beneficiaries of CommCare understand the health information they are receiving. She's excited to see Dimagi continue to grow and looks forward to being a part of Dimagi's transition into multiple development domains.
Nisha graduated from Tufts University with a degree in Anthropology. She is currently based in India.
Sharon Greene
Program Analyst
Sharon Greene is an epidemiologist who is always seeking the next adventure. A few of Sharon’s favorite things are travel, trekking, cycling, experiencing new cultures, and food. She is enthusiastic about global health and excited to explore the implementation of technological solutions in development programs.
Prior to joining the Dimagi team, Sharon tracked Guinea Worm in South Sudan and conducted surveillance for foodborne illness with CDC in the United States. Sharon completed a B.Sc in Biology and a B.Sc in Environmental Science from Allegheny College and an MPH in Global Environmental Health from Emory University.
Sangya Kaphle
Field Manager
Spent childhood testing the market for licorice on Wall Street. Spent a year short selling hair on the black market. Developed several new methods for promoting fried chicken in Miami, FL. Won several awards for analyzing jack-in-the-boxes in Pensacola, FL. Have some experience building pogo sticks in Nigeria. Gifted in exporting magma in Phoenix, AZ.
Sugandha Nagpal
Field Manager
Sugandha Nagpal has recently completed her Masters in Sociology at York University. She has worked at a number of non-profit, community organizations in Canada on issues like forced marriage, gender-based discrimination, community health, youth safety, social equity and immigrant integration. She has previously interned at the Centre for Social Research and UN Women South Asia Regional Office in Delhi, India where she worked on the issues of domestic violence in low-income communities and gender and land rights, respectively.
Sugandha wrote her master’s research review paper on sex-selection in Indo-Canadian communities. She is interested in conducting critical research that focuses on, marginalized populations and bridging the gap between theory and practice. Going forward, she hopes to pursue interdisciplinary and community centric research in the areas of gender, race, class and caste, transnational migration community health and gendered development.
Natasha Azad
Field Manager
Natasha is a native Texan with Indian roots. She has lived and worked in 8 different countries and most recently completed her MPhil in Development Studies from the University of Oxford. Before joining Dimagi, she primarily worked in Latin America and South Asia on a variety of development projects.
After completing her B.A. in international relations and economics at USC in Los Angeles, Natasha was a Project Director in Panama for Amigos de las Americas and later moved to Ecuador to teach English through World Teach. After working in Latin America for several years, Natasha set off across the pond to Oxford, England to get her masters, where her thesis focused on the relationship between food security and undernutrition in the so-called “tribal belt” of South West Madhya Pradesh.
Her time in Latin America and England was dominated by mountain climbing and rowing respectively. She loves being outdoors, American football, classical and jazz music and is a film fanatic. She’s currently negotiating her love of film with Bollywood’s combination of social commentary and overindulgence.
Maxwell Izenberg
Field Manager
Max is fervent about linguistics, anthropology, and above all, improving access to health care and reducing geographic health disparities. Prior to Dimagi, he earned his Master’s from a joint program between the London School of Economics and London School of Hygiene in Health Policy, Planning, & Financing. Max’s background is in health informatics, quality improvement, and assurance in primary care with additional research experience in this field in USA, Costa Rica, and China.
After completing an undergraduate degree in Public Health at Tulane, he lived in Punjab studying Punjabi while volunteering with Punjab State AIDS Control Society. Partly towards the completion of his Master’s Thesis, he served as a research consultant and explored barriers to financing adequate wastewater infrastructure for a low-income rural setting in the US and served as a liaison for partnerships among regional rural development agencies.
Sreemoyee Mukherjee
Field Manager
Sreemoyee is an economist, who wants to apply her knowledge to developmental problems. She suffers from a severe case of wanderlust. She believes her love of travelling will help her go around the world one day. She is quite the foodie and has gone into a food-coma more than once, only to bounce back and eat again!
Prior to Dimagi, she was working in the corporate sector in Mumbai for Altius Fincap and Larsen & Toubro as a Financial Analyst before leaving to pursue her interests for the social development sector. Sreemoyee volunteered as a disaster aid-worker to assist with the flood relief efforts in Assam through the North East Social Trust and helped in setting up health camps there. Hailing from Kolkata, she has studied and worked in cities all over India and has spent many months traversing its length and breadth. Sreemoyee holds a Master’s degree in Economics from Mumbai University. Her two desires in life are to create impact and gain new experiences in every way possible.
Anushree Banerji
Field Manager
Anushree is a Field Manager who is interested in observing how technology interacts with low level literacy, limited resources and power balances in development practice. She holds a B.A in Economics from St. Xavier’s College Bombay, and a Masters in Development Studies from Oxford where she focused on decision making among female Madrasa students. Prior to Dimagi she worked in corporate banking, consulting and media.
Food is her passion and she is on a personal mission to eat at every single Parsi restaurant in Bombay. Her other interests include reading, 80s pop, John Hughes’ movies and Bollywood.
Rishad Gambhir
Field Manager
An adventurer at heart, Rishad is interested in social design and in the implementation of creative, evidence-based interventions in low resource communities. He is keen on exploring diverse avenues for Dimagi’s technology and collaborating closely with various organizations and beneficiaries at the grassroots level.
Prior to joining Dimagi, Rishad worked as an analyst at National Economic Research Associates (NERA) in New York City. As a part of NERA’s securities, mass torts and labor practices, he carried out extensive data-driven analyses for litigation purposes. While in New York, he completed the StartingBloc Institute for Social Innovation and raised funds for a non-profit organization that supports the education of underprivileged girls in India.
Rishad grew up in Calcutta before crossing shores for his undergraduate education. He studied Economics and Art History at Vassar College and spent a semester in Denmark. Food, art and architecture are his avid interests. He enjoys any adventure that leads to serendipitous discoveries of new cuisines, sites and structures. As a field manager, he is now looking forward to many such discoveries – in sight and taste –across the Indian subcontinent.
Saijai Liangpunsakul
Field Manager
Dimagi Africa
Ryan Hartford
Country Director, Mozambique
Ryan has deep technical experience in web and application software and an entrepreneurial passion for improving the world with technology. He has built and deployed custom software solutions for the US Government, non profits, NGOs and private industry in more than 20 countries. Prior to working at Dimagi, he led the open source release of OpenLMIS at VillageReach and launched a startup in Seattle.
Ryan holds a BA in Computer Science from Colgate University.
Kieran Sharpey-Schafer
Country Director, South Africa
Kieran has been working on mhealth projects in Southern Africa since 2006. He has journeyed from mobile developer to technical PM on various projects with Cell-Life & UNICEF in the region, working with NGOs and government partners to build, evaluate and scale up innovations.
Many of these projects involved successful partnerships with Dimagi (including the founding of the javarosa open source project) so joining the team in 2012 was a natural fit.
He has generally discovered that the people problems around adopting innovations are often more difficult than the technical challenges, and usually more interesting too.
Steve Snyder
Project and Operations Manager
Steve has a diverse project management background having supported large USAID programs in Asia and the Middle East, including in fields such as maternal and child healthcare and trade facilitation. Ready to transition to an overseas posting, Steve joined Dimagi in search of an opportunity to delve more deeply into mobile technology in addressing a variety of the world’s most pressing development challenges. Excited to set-up shop in South Africa, Steve is hoping to leverage his previous experience in seeking out unique opportunities to apply Dimagi’s applications in novel development ventures across the region.
Steve holds a bachelors of science in foreign service from Georgetown University and a masters of science in development studies from the London School of Economics. He is enthusiastic about expanding his knowledge of this fast-growing sector through direct coordination and collaboration with beneficiaries and implementers on the ground.
Simon Kelly
Senior Engineer
After graduating from the University of Cape Town with a Masters in Electrical Engineering Simon spent several years working on mHealth projects in and around South Africa. He joined Dimagi after a short period in the online advertising industry where he worked on large scale SAO systems.
Simon has a passion for developing efficient systems that people enjoy using. He greatly prefers working on open systems and believes that building good software starts with building good relationships.
Outside of work Simon loves the outdoors, particularly the African bush where he spent many family holidays growing up. Simon spends his time off enjoying the company of his wife and friends in and around the beautiful city of Cape Town. He's often out walking his dog and is also quite involved in his local church.
Nick Nestle
Project Manager
Unique to Dimagi, Nick’s entire prior career was working in the “corporate world” where he designed and implemented software solutions for enterprises of all sizes. His experience working with organizations to improve heavily bureaucratic processes has taught him that the best solution is the simplest and that software must be designed with the end user in mind. Nick has experience in all aspects in the software development process from high-level solution design to hands-on implementation in the field.
Nick is an engineer at heart and loves the opportunity to tune the world out for a period of time to focus on a complex challenge. However, he is equally passionate about working with people and will inevitably resurface from his focus to chat with a colleague or tell a terrible joke that he is often the only one laughing at (His philosophy is “I tell jokes for myself. If you happen to also find it funny, so be it, but it’s not necessary.”). As such, he is most comfortable in the middle ground bridging the gap between users and developers to create the most effective solution.
Nick graduated from graduated from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology with a Bachelors degree in Electrical Engineering.
Andrea Fletcher
Field Manager
Andrea has always been one to carve her own path. During her undergraduate at Washington & Jefferson College in Washington, PA, she wrote her own major in bioethics combining courses in biology and philosophy. She followed that with a master of public health from the Emory University Rollins School of Public Health in Atlanta, GA, as part of the Hubert Department of Global Health. While at Emory she completed a concentration in infectious diseases and an interdisciplinary certificate in human rights.
She has experience working in emergency preparedness, child abuse prevention, human trafficking, religion and public health, and HIV/AIDS both domestically and internationally.
She currently works in Southern Africa and has also spent time in East Africa, Central America, and Europe. Andrea enjoys reading, running, hiking, and wandering the world in search of new adventures.
Hilary Haber
Field Manager
Hilary is an explorer at heart who loves learning about difficult cultures as much as she loves trying their food! With extensive travel experience and a passion for global health equity, she is excited to explore the use of mobile technology to strengthen health systems. She comes to Dimagi after spending almost three years living in Managua, Nicaragua, where she coordinated a 3800-member pediatric cohort study on Dengue Fever and Influenza in collaboration with UC Berkeley and the Nicaraguan Ministry of Health. After spending a month training with the Dimagi India team, she is now based in Maputo, Mozambique and is helping to establish a country office and support projects in the region.
Hilary studied Molecular Biology and Public Health at UC Berkeley, where also she divided her time between stem cell research and Cal sporting events. She is at her happiest in the great outdoors and is endlessly fascinated by human ingenuity in unlikely places.
Kara Grijalva
Field Manager
Kara Grijalva works with Dimagi Africa after living, working and traveling with international development programs for the past 7 years. Along the way she has picked up lessons from diverse cultures and made global connections, helping launch her passion for public health and education outreach. Kara has extensive experience with sustainable community development in southern and western African countries, where she has helped to develop programs aimed at empowering areas lacking in resources and tools.
Kara is at her best when out in the field, working hands on with clients and helping all levels of the community reach their full potential. She joins the Dimagi Team with a Masters Degree from SIT Graduate Institute and a Bachelors degree from Franklin College Switzerland. When not working, she can be found plotting out outdoor adventures, climbing up into the Cascade mountains, or sniffing her way back down for berry pie
Rosa Akbari
Field Manager
Rosa joins Dimagi with a background in emergent humanitarian technologies, particularly those applied to complex emergency settings. Her interest in humanitarian innovation began while working as a research assistant for the US Department of Defense. In January 2010, she deployed to Haiti as part of a six-person civil-military unit tasked to augment basic communication networks after the earthquake. Upon return, she helped coordinate RELIEF, a quarterly field experimentation initiative focused on improving technological field capabilities for federal and international first responders. Both experiences inspired her to source human-centric solutions using the lowest common denominator of technology possible.
In June 2010, Rosa visited the Western Sahara Refugee Camps to survey humanitarian logistics within a protracted crisis. She returned in December 2012 to run an SMS-based pilot in partnership with the Sahrawi Red Crescent; the project was funded through UNOCHA’s Humanitarian Futures Grant Programme. The major takeaway: we all have a thing or two to learn from the desert dwellers of the world.
Rosa is a firm believer in technology as a catalyst – not an end-all solution.
Fiorenzo Conte
Field Manager
Fiorenzo joins Dimagi with a background in political science, international development and public health. Fio is Italian and grew up in Napoli and despite the saying "See Napoli and then die" apparently he survived living there for 21 years. Before joining Dimagi Fio worked with 200 farmers in rural Benin in the area of microfinance. He then moved to a sugarcane plantation in Western Kenya where he implemented a project for sex workers and coordinated a team of community health workers. Before that he worked in Lebanon for UNICEF where he supported the Ministry of Health in the measles and polio vaccination of 250,000 children. In his latest incarnation Fio will work as a Dimagi Field Manager in Senegal as part of the Dimagi Africa team. He joins Dimagi because he thinks that mobile technology can make a difference in public health.
Fio has a BSc in International Relations because he originally wanted to become a diplomat only to find out later on that he prefers working on the grassroots level and in direct contact with constituents. He went on to complete an MSc in International Development in London.
Marco Horta
Field Manager
Marco loves technology and is always thinking up ways to use technology and social media to further development and social good. Before joining Dimagi as a field manager in Mozambique, Marco served as the social media and digital strategy consultant for the United States Embassy in Maputo, Mozambique. He was “Señor Fixit” and assistant to the Administrative Attache at the Mexican Embassy in Abuja, Nigeria. Marco earned a BA in advertising and has used online marketing and social media to connect American companies to the Latin American market. He has diverse account management experience with Pandemic Labs, Forrester Research and DirectoryM.
Marco grew up in Mexico and spent summers with family in the United States; becoming fascinated by different cultures at a young age. As an adult and a professional he has been exploring how technology can help bridge the gap between countries and cultures. When he’s not geeking out he’s usually enjoying life by creating his own culinary inventions or hanging out with wild animals in their natural habitat.
Dimagi Central America
Diego Rios
Field Manager
Diego recently joined the Dimagi team and is based in Guatemala City. He is an avid traveler and squash fanatic! Before joining Dimagi, Diego worked in Washington DC for a social start-up developing and implementing software solutions for small and large financial institutions.
Diego holds a BA in Finance from Loyola University in New Orleans, where he spend much of his time trying to launch a microfinance institution and walking down Bourbon Street. He also studied Project Management at Georgetown University while living in DC.
Friends of Dimagi
Pushwaz Virk
Vice President, Medical Affairs
Pushwaz is responsible for strategy and execution of Dimagi’s health care solutions and is involved in development of health care technologies through research grants, global health partnerships and management of clinical research. He brings experience of working with life science and information technology companies, health care providers and payers. Before joining Dimagi, he was at a boutique management consulting firm focusing on life science and health care strategy consulting projects. Pushwaz worked on clinical quality, operational efficient and health informatics projects at Harvard University Health Services and Group Health Plan as a management fellow. Earlier, he was the founding member of the Life sciences & Health care practice of a global IT services and consulting company and was responsible for telemedicine projects and new product development.
Pushwaz has great interest in global health, primary care innovation, venture creation process and is involved in various organizations supporting health care entrepreneurship. He has also conducted research on innovations in global health care delivery at Harvard University and has conducted research on patient safety at Brigham and Women's Hospital.
Pushwaz practiced as a primary care physician in India and has MBA from University of Delhi and MPH in health care management from Harvard University.
Derek Treatman
Contractor
Derek is a globetrotter with a knack for linguistics and interpersonal communication. Having lived in Mexico, Panama, Tunisia, and France he speaks French, Spanish, some Arabic, and is currently learning Hindi. With a background in information and communication technology, human computer interaction, and medical informatics, he is driven to explore methods of information exchange in healthcare through the use of technology that crosses linguistic and cultural barriers. His previous work at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York includes information system design for international clinical trials with research centers in New York and Taiwan.
Derek Treatman holds an MS in Electrical and Computer Engineering from the Georgia Institute of Technology, an MS in Computer Engineering from l'École Supérieure d'Électricité (Supélec) in France, and a BS in Electrical and Computer Engineering from Rutgers University.
Dr. Animesh Sharma
Health Informatics Consultant
Animesh Sharma is a healthcare informatics specialist at Dimagi. His educational qualifications, work experience and skill sets cut across fields like clinical medicine, computer science and bioinformatics. Animesh has worked in diverse settings, holding professional positions in academia at premier research institutes in India and as a graduate student in the United States. His research has focused on applying pattern matching and other machine learning techniques to identify regulatory networks at the genomic level. On the industry side, his experience includes appointments at Infosys Technologies Inc., a leading Information Technology Services company in India. While at Infosys, Animesh was instrumental in the development and implementation of the Oracle clinical works software application.
Animesh received an MBBS degree from the prestigious Maulana Azad Medical College, Delhi and a Post Graduate Diploma in Bioinformatics from Jawaharlal Nehru University, Delhi. He is an enthusiastic computer hacker and an active seeker of knowledge. Animesh is based in New Delhi, India.
Teddy Svoronos
Public Health Consultant
Teddy Svoronos is a current MPH student at Columbia University, studying effectiveness and outcomes research. He graduated in 2008 from Georgetown University's School of Foreign Service, where he studied international health policy. A recent Fulbright Scholar in Tanzania, Teddy developed CommCare's pregnancy module, an application to monitor safe pregnancies. The module has since been adopted by numerous organizations around the world, and has been the subject of current and future research studies. He previously conducted independent research in Rwanda on a mobile health information system that has informed national policymaking on ICT and health. As a public health consultant at Dimagi, he is involved in developing CommCare's module for newborn care, in addition to a suite of reports to assist health professionals in managing information received through CommCare.
Seneca Perri
Research Coordinator
Seneca is currently working on her PhD in Nursing Informatics at the University of Utah with an emphasis on electronic medical decision support for low-resource populations. She is based in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania and is serving as the research coordinator on an NIH-funded Harvard study to improve and assess e-IMCI's impact on patient comprehension and adherence to treatment guidelines. Seneca received a Bachelor of Science degree in Nursing from Westminster College and is an experienced newborn intensive care unit and community care nurse.
Dr. Vishwanath Anantraman
Co-Founder
Vishwanath is a physician who, after having practiced medicine in rural India, decided to pursue a career in health and medical informatics. He joined the Decision Systems Group at the Brigham and Women's hospital for a post-doctoral fellowship, and subsequently obtained a master's degree in medical informatics from the Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology.
Vishwanath has been involved in a number of informatics projects in association with faculty at the AI division of MIT's Laboratory of Computer Science, and has consulting experience from a number of large healthcare corporations.
Tarjei Mikkelsen
Co-Founder
Tarjei designed and implemented Dimagi’s first medical applications in India, South Africa and the United States. He holds a bachelor’s degree in mathematics, a master’s degree in biomedical engineering and a Ph.D. in bioinformatics from MIT. He has previously worked at HP’s Cambridge Research Laboratory and the MIT Laboratory for Computer Science.
Advisors
Prof. Victor Zue
Strategic Advisor
Victor Zue is a Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at MIT and Director of the Institute's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL). He is also the first holder of the Delta Electronics Chair endowed for senior researchers. Victor's main research interest is in the development of spoken language interfaces to make human/computer interactions easier and more natural, and he has taught many courses and lectured extensively on this subject. Prior to 2001, he headed the Spoken Language Systems Group, which has pioneered the development of many systems that enable a user to interact with computers using multiple spoken languages (English, Japanese, Mandarin, and Spanish). Their work has been covered by several publications internationally including Time and The Economist. A Business Week article in 1997 described him as one of five "trailblazers" in speech interfaces worldwide. He was also featured in an article in the Discover magazine in December 2000.
Outside of MIT, Victor has consulted for many multinational corporations, and he has served on many planning, advisory, and review committees for the US Department of Defense, the National Science Foundation, and the National Academy of Science and Engineering. From 1996-1998, he chaired the Information Science and Technology (ISAT) study group for the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency of the U.S. Department of Defense, helping the DoD formulate new directions for information technology research. In 1990, he became a Fellow of the Acoustical Society of America. In 1999, he received the DARPA Sustained Excellence Award. In 2002, he received the Speech Technology Magazine's inaugural Lifetime Achievement Award. In 2004, he was inducted into the National Academy of Engineering.
Prof. Alex (Sandy) Pentland
Strategic Advisor
Sandy is a pioneer in wearable computers, health systems, smart environments, and technology for developing countries. He is one of the most-cited computer scientists in the world.
Sandy is the founding director of Media Lab Asia, and is a co-founder of the Center for Future Health, the Wearable Computing research community, and the international Digital Nations Consortium. He was formerly the Academic Head of the MIT Media Laboratory, and is the Toshiba Professor of Media Arts and Sciences. He currently directs the Human Design research group at the MIT Media Lab.
Sandy has won numerous international awards in the arts, sciences and engineering. He was chosen by Newsweek as one of the 100 Americans most likely to shape the next century.
Dr. N. Rao Machiraju
Strategic Advisor
Currently, Dr. Machiraju is the CEO and co-founder of reQall.com, a spin out from MIT's Media Lab and a research partner with NASA. reQall for iPhone and on Blackberry, has been recognized by the BBC, The New York Times, The Times of London, Forbes, and CNET amongst many others for its groundbreaking consumer application to help people remember better. Prior to reQall, Rao co-founded Conceptlabs, a strategic consultancy working with Silicon Valley-based technology start-ups to help them realize their passion for building products and guiding them through corporate creation, venture funding and exit.