VP, Impact Strategy & Partnerships

Maisha Meds is hiring! We're looking for a VP of Impact Strategy & Partnerships with a background in organizational strategy, business development, research, and delivery to share our next phase of growth and impact.

About Maisha Meds

Maisha Meds is an organization dedicated to improving health care in Africa through best-in-class technology. 

Founded in 2017, Maisha Meds has created the largest digital network of private pharmacies and clinics across Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, Nigeria, and Zambia through our mobile software. Our platform not only helps these providers improve business by making sales, managing inventory, and tracking patients. It also reimburses them for providing high-quality care for malaria, family planning, and HIV prevention at discounted costs. 

Maisha Meds logs millions of patient visits every year and has provided hundreds of thousands of reimbursements to date. We harness data from our network of pharmacies and clinics to reveal health and market trends, which allows us to design better solutions that work for the people we serve. We have worked with leading academic institutions such as UC Berkeley, Emory University, and KEMRI to evaluate the effectiveness of our programs. Research shows that our system is able to significantly increase the uptake of long-acting contraceptives and appropriate malaria case management.

Our work is funded by a range of partners including scale-up funding from USAID Development Innovation Ventures and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. This will help Maisha Meds greatly expand its mobile software to 7,500 total pharmacies and clinics by late 2026, delivering subsidized care to nearly a million new patients in the process.

About the role

We are seeking a VP, Impact Strategy & Partnerships to lead business development, research partnerships, and oversight of our impact-focused programs. This is a senior, externally-oriented role responsible for growing our portfolio of health programs and funder relationships,  from identifying opportunities and building the investment case, to managing awards and ensuring successful delivery.

The VP will work closely with our leadership to shape how we position ourselves with a new generation of global health funders who bring rigorous, evidence-driven standards to their giving. This role requires someone who is intellectually sharp, deeply comfortable with quantitative investment cases, and highly effective at building trust with sophisticated, values-aligned donors.

This role is remote-first with frequent travel for fundraising and to our countries of operation. You will report to our Chief Development Officer (CDO) and supervise a team with a focus on business development and program design & delivery.

The start date is Sept 1, and compensation is commensurate with experience.

Responsibilities

Business development & pipeline

• Oversee team that leads end-to-end business development across our health program portfolio, including vision, TB, AI, HIV, malaria, and new areas; with a focus on scaling Maisha Meds’ proven approach to results-based financing.
• Build and manage a pipeline of family offices, Effective Altruism-aligned funders, and high-net-worth philanthropists, with a focus on donors who prioritize evidence, cost-effectiveness, and scalable impact.
• Represent the organization externally at relevant convenings and lead external communications related to impact strategy.

Strategy review, evidence development, model iteration, relationship management

• Lead strategy development across impact areas of Maisha Meds, with a focus on patient programs and LLMs, including prioritization of existing and new health areas.
• Oversee cost-effectiveness modeling to support program investment cases and identify new areas for program development and low-cost evidence generation to further drive cost-effectiveness.
• Build and manage research partnerships with academic institutions and technical partners to test approaches and build and communicate evidence.

Materials & investment case development

• Identify and pursue new programmatic areas of focus; scope opportunities and assess strategic fit alongside the CDO and CEO.
• Lead the development of funder-facing materials including concept notes, proposals, and pitch decks.
• Translate program evidence and platform data into compelling narratives for sophisticated, rigorous, analytically-oriented audiences.

Health programs portfolio oversight

• Oversee team that holds accountability for the full portfolio of impact programs, ensuring contracts are performing and funder relationships are strong.
• Coordinate internally across technical, operations, and finance teams to ensure awards are delivered on time and on scope with risks identified and managed proactively.
• Champion the development of formal program management discipline as the organization scales, while maintaining agility and minimizing bureaucracy.

Team leadership

• Build, manage, and mentor a high-performing team
• Set team priorities, develop workflows, and create capacity for scale
• Set the culture of the team, rigorous but not rigid, externally ambitious but internally collaborative

Qualifications

• 8+ years of experience in global health, development finance, or a closely related field, with a meaningful portion in a business development or partnerships role
• Experience in a blended organization combining software, data, and service delivery
• Deep familiarity with Effective Altruism-aligned and family office funders, including how they evaluate cost-effectiveness, assess evidence quality, and make giving decisions; prior relationships in these networks strongly preferred
• Strong analytical skills; able to build and communicate investment cases that hold up to scrutiny from technically sophisticated donors
• Excellent writer and communicator, able to develop high-quality concept notes and proposals with limited turnaround time
• Experience managing post-award funder relationships and coordinating complex, multi-stakeholder program delivery
• Demonstrated ability to operate across functions and build systems and team
• Background in or strong knowledge of at least one core health area: malaria, HIV, TB, vision, or clinical AI
• Excited by outcomes-based financing models and private sector health delivery
• Prior experience managing and developing teams
• Comfortable working across sub-Saharan Africa; prior experience in East or West Africa strongly preferred
• Mindsets:
  • A team player who loves working collaboratively
  • A sense of optimism, flexibility, and adaptability to any situation
  • An ability to thrive in ambiguous situations due to your resilience and tenacity
  • A growth mindset and a deep enthusiasm for learning, feedback, and continuous improvement
  • A blend of passion, humility, patience, and a good sense of humor
  • A tendency to roll up your sleeves in order to move projects forward
    

Why you should join us

• On a roll: We are doubling year-over-year with new funding partnerships that are boosting expansion in multiple countries
• Great team: Founded, managed and backed by successful veterans of Stanford School of Medicine, Google, Helium Health, M-Kopa, IQVIA, and CNN. We have technologists, clinicians, and economists working side by side to solve difficult problems.
• Great funders: We’re backed by the Gates Foundation, CIFF, Livelihoods Impact Fund, Novartis, the Nigerian Government, and many others - this is catalytic funding to fundamentally change the way health outcomes are funded in the private sector throughout Sub-Saharan Africa.
• Huge market: We are disrupting a massive, growing $50+B market for healthcare payments, with a focus on paying for health outcomes to ensure patients get the best quality care.
• Great customers: We create the building blocks of health insurance that ensure our healthcare providers deliver excellent and life-saving care.
• Impact: We have cultivated a fun and exciting start-up culture that empowers the team to make a huge impact.