Last night, Fast Company—the world’s leading progressive business media brand—named the Mobile Alliance for Maternal Action (MAMA) winner of its Innovation By Design Award in the Service Design category.
With the Social Good Summit in full swing last week I was in awe of all the people that made their way through the registration table. I was even more surprised to hear many of those same registrants ask for me by name.
As it currently stands the mHealth (mobile phones for health) field is fairly fragmented. The term “thousand flowers bloom” is a commonly coined phrase at this point. This is a far leap from where we were not too long ago–Where conference goers and thought leaders in the mHealth community were advocating on the power of mobile technology as a global health solution.
Becoming a blogger was never something I anticipated. It was not a dream of mine. I was not even keenly aware of this social media space or the profound depth of people that are involved with it until a few months before I started. To say that my evolution to blogging as a hobby, a new found passion, and now as my sole career was a surprise would be… an understatement…
Two years ago, Secretary of State Hilary Clinton said, “We need to work toward a world in which access to networks and information brings people closer together and expands the definition of the global community.” This week, I saw her call to action happening live, as a group of six Internet Freedom Fellows, brought together by the U.S. Department of State and the U.S. Mission in Geneva, sat down to break bread with UNESCO and the United Nations Foundation here in our Washington D.C. offices
Right now, world leaders are gathering in Rio de Janeiro for the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development, Rio+20, to define pathways to a more sustainable future for our world. Known as Rio+20 because it marks 20 years since the first Earth Summit held in Rio, the conference will bring together governments, businesses and groups from around the world to shape how we can reduce poverty, advance social equity, and ensure environmental protection to get to the future we want.
Frontline health workers, including nurses, midwives and community health workers, are the first and often the only link to health care for millions of people living in the developing world. These invaluable figures in communities throughout the world are critical in settings where overall primary health care systems are weak or inaccessible.
In 1999, only one year after I got my first mobile phone, I launched a company that enabled people to order online groceries and pay their bills with our newly created, kitchen iPad-like device that would sit on the countertop. I distinctly remember hearing venture capitalists at the time ask us why we didn’t enable this over the mobile phone.
