Why we chose Nick as a Fellow

Nick's wife was an OBGYN working in Western Kenya and described her friend's death during childbirth as 'easily avoided with better care.' Nick was working for Acumen Fund investing in businesses in Kenya and had seen both the dramatic need for better healthcare and the opportunity to improve systems in low-resource setting. So he set out to launch Jacaranda Health and bring business savvy and scalability to maternal health.

Over 250,000 women a year in Africa die during childbirth; a woman in Kenya is 100 times more likely to die while giving birth than her cousin in Europe. Jacaranda is designed by and for childbearing women living in the peri-urban areas of Nariobi; the model integrates evidence-based clinical interventions with business innovations to improve uptake of maternal health services, reduce costs, and dramatically improve the quality of care to which women have access. Jacaranda Health runs clinics near the slums where women can go for respectful obstetric care, safe delivery, family planning, and postnatal care.