Mark Kaigwa is an entrepreneur, author and professional speaker. He is the Founder and CEO of Nendo, an award-winning digital research, marketing, and training agency based in Nairobi, working across the continent. Nendo delivers grounded African insights and trends to the world.
Nendo's clients include Pan-African corporate market leaders and transformative global and regional non-profit organisations including Safaricom, Jambojet, Equity Bank Group, BASF, Cipla, Education in Ireland, ILRI, The US Embassy, Hivos, M&C Saatchi, among others. Kaigwa and his team at Nendo have done work spanning over 20 countries in Africa delivering work in English, Swahili, French, Pidgin, and Portuguese.
Mark Kaigwa is considered an expert at forecasting trends in the internet, social media, and mobile industry in Africa with 2019, 2020, 2021, and 2023/2024 trend reports. He also teaches and shares with schools, families, churches, and religious institutions on technology in the home. He has been recognised for his work, including among Forbes Africa's inaugural 30 under 30 Best Young Entrepreneurs in Africa in 2013, the Business Daily's Top 40 under 40 men of 2019 and Yahoo! Finance's Top 20 Marketing Influencers of 2019.
Mark Kaigwa lives in Nairobi, Kenya and is married to Dr. Wanjirũ Kaigwa, a clinical researcher and medical doctor. They have three children together.
Dr. Madidi is a passionate Medical Doctor and Public Health Practitioner with over eighteen years of experience dedicated to advancing public health and medicine. His expertise shines in areas like HIV prevention, care, treatment, and sexual and reproductive health, alongside robust health systems strengthening.
Dr. Madidi's educational journey includes postgraduate training in Business Administration from the Management College of Southern Africa and specialized public health training from the renowned London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. Currently, he has the privilege of serving as the FHI360 Country Representative and Project Director in Malawi, where he leads impactful initiatives. Previously, he was the Regional Chief of Party for the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative's USAID-funded USD 200 Million CoAg, heading the Africa Regional Office. His experience with PSI Zimbabwe was diverse and enriching, where he played vital roles, including deputy country representative overseeing all clinical programs, deputy chief of party for a $95 million USAID-funded agreement known as "Going the Last Mile for HIV Control," and as Project Lead for a $21.2 million Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation-supported Voluntary Medical Male Circumcision grant.
Before his time at PSI, Dr. Madidi served as the Deputy Chief of Party for a $57 million USAID-funded Cooperative Agreement focused on Strengthening Private Sector Services for HIV. His earlier role as Senior Technical Advisor with the Clinton Health Access Initiative in Zimbabwe saw him leading critical initiatives in Malaria Elimination, access to HIV/AIDS medicines, Pediatric AIDS, and Male Circumcision. Dr. Madidi collaborated closely with local government partners, global teams, and donors, championing programs that made a difference. He also directed the Male Circumcision and Malaria programs at PI, where he developed rollout plans and led implementation efforts alongside the Government of Zimbabwe. His work has involved providing technical assistance in training and service delivery, supervising projects, and ensuring service quality through rigorous evaluation and improvement processes.
Before diving into NGOs, Dr. Madidi gained valuable experience as a District Medical Officer with the Ministry of Health, where he coordinated initiatives to enhance public health in Matabeleland North Province. His extensive experience managing large-scale projects fuels his passion for taking on program/project management roles in multimillion-dollar initiatives, with a dedicated focus on HIV, sexual and reproductive health rights, and strengthening health systems.
Dr. Nelly Mugo is a Senior Principal Clinical Research Scientist at the Kenya Medical Research Institute (KEMRI). Research Associate Professor at the University of Washington (USA), Department of Global Health. She is actively engaged in clinical trial research; her interest is in sexually transmitted infection with focus on HIV and cervical cancer prevention research. She is a reproductive health specialist, with over 27 years of clinical experience and 2 decades in clinical research.
In collaboration with scientists from Kenya, Uganda and USA specifically, the University of Washington, she has led qualitative and quantitative studies of ART for HIV prevention, cervical intraepithelial lesions, PrEP, fertility intention, and contraceptive use among HIV serodiscordant couples at the Thika, Kenya site and at the Coptic Hope clinic, Nairobi. She leads the clinical research team 'Partners in Health Research and Development' (PHRD)-KEMRI research team in Thika, conducting high-impact HIV prevention research. They conducted the proof of concept Partners PrEP Study, the landmark clinical trial of pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) for HIV prevention among serodiscordant couples, followed by the demonstration project of integrated PrEP and antiretroviral treatment for serodiscordant couples. This work laid the foundation for PrEP implementation in Kenya and globally. The team is currently implementing the Partners Scale up project to assess delivery of PrEP in public health facilities and a clinical trial on HIV self-testing to reduce frequency of clinic visits for oral PrEP users.
Specific to cervical cancer prevention, her work includes HPV pathogeneses studies among female sex workers in high-density low-income settings in Nairobi, evaluation of cervical cancer screening interventions for HIV-infected women and HPV vaccine immunogenicity among HIV-infected adolescents. She provided clinical care for women with precancerous lesions at the Kenyatta National Hospital and provided mentorship and training for undergraduate and post graduate medical students for over a decade.
She is currently a protocol-chair for an HPV vaccine single dose trial currently being implemented in Kenya at 3 clinical trial facilities (The KEN-SHE study) and a member of the 'Single Dose HPV Vaccine Consortium'. Dr. Nelly R. Mugo has contributed to various National AIDS Control and STI Program (NASCOP), Department of Reproductive Health (Kenya), WHO forums and guidelines committees. She has over 160 publications in peer-reviewed journals.
Wawira Nyagah is the Executive Director of Health Market Access Bridge, where she leads the organization’s mission to accelerate equitable, sustainable access to HIV prevention and SRH innovations across low- and middle-income countries. She brings nearly 2 decades of experience working at the intersection of public health, policy, health markets and community-driven delivery to ensure health products reach the people who need them most.
Before joining Health Market Access Bridge, Wawira served as Director of Product Introduction and Access at AVAC, spearheading global and country-led efforts to move promising HIV prevention technologies (DVR, CAB, and LEN) from evidence to impact. Earlier, she worked for more than a decade with PS Kenya in various roles, including as Director of Strategy & Innovations, and helped reimagine how health programs are designed and delivered—integrating behavioral insight, strategic communications, and service delivery to achieve scale and sustainability.
Wawira has worked extensively with global and regional organizations and has collaborated with governments, donors, normative agencies, product developers, and civil society to overcome structural barriers to access, from regulatory and financing constraints to market readiness and last-mile delivery. Her work has contributed to shaping policies, strengthening health systems, and advancing integrated product introduction, access and uptake across HIV prevention, family planning, maternal, newborn and child health, and adolescent sexual and reproductive health.
Wawira holds a Master's degree in Social Communications and a Bachelor's degree in Social Sciences from the Gregorian Pontifical University in Italy.
Joyce is a development sector expert with over 20 years' experience.
Throughout her career, she has spearheaded the design and implementation of large-scale programs. What began as a profession has evolved into a fervent commitment to effecting tangible change, particularly in empowering women and youth.
Vast experience in social behaviour change contributed immensely to communication for social change through design of successful large-scale behaviour change communication strategies, development, implementation and measurement.
Joyce is a social franchising expert who has shaped the landscape of social franchising for health through the scale up of a globally renown franchise, Tunza, spearheading innovations such as health financing, access to affordable credit, business solutions design of sustainable franchise models.
As a development expert she also supported transformation of the health sector through various roles including being part of Expert task force to transform and reposition NHIF in Kenya, and has also served in the Board of Kenya Healthcare Federation (KHF) for 6 years, the private health sector board in Kenya that aims to promote strategic public-private partnerships towards achieving national access to quality healthcare.
Mitchell Warren has been the Executive Director of AVAC since 2004. He was previously the Senior Director for Vaccine Preparedness at the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative (IAVI) and also spent four years as Vice President and Director of International Affairs for The Female Health Company (FHC), the manufacturer of the female condom, where he directed efforts to design and implement reproductive health programs that integrate the female condom, and he led global advocacy efforts for expanded commitment to female-initiated prevention methods. Mitchell also spent six years at Population Services International (PSI) designing and implementing social marketing, communications and health promotion activities in Africa, Asia and Europe, including five years running PSI's project in South Africa.
Mitchell is a member of the WHO-UNAIDS HIV Vaccine Advisory Committee, the Office of AIDS Research Advisory Council of the US National Institutes of Health (NIH), and Maloto. Mitchell has degrees in English and History from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and studied health policy at the Johns Hopkins University School of Hygiene and Public Health.
Daniel Were is a global public health specialist with over 20 years' experience in program management, implementation, and program science, primarily in HIV prevention, sexual and reproductive health. He currently serves as Project Director at Jhpiego, leading two implementation science projects: one evaluating community pharmacy-based delivery of HIV PrEP and PEP, and another evaluating the integration of point-of-care diagnostics for the management of STI's in Kenya's public health sector. Daniel previously led a 3-year implementation science project that demonstrated the feasibility of online PrEP/PEP delivery, now being scaled nationally. He also led the flagship Jilinde (Bridge to Scale) project that successfully introduced and scaled oral PrEP in Kenya, in partnership with the Ministry of Health. He was also Jhpiego's regional technical advisor for PrEP in sub-Saharan Africa.
Daniel is a member of Kenya's National Technical Working Groups on HIV testing & PrEP, STIs & viral hepatitis, and key populations, and has contributed to global advisory committees for the International Partnership for Microbicides (Dapivirine ring project and access advisory committees) and the Biomedical Prevention Implementation Collaborative (BioPIC). Daniel holds a doctorate in health communication from Moi University and a Master of Arts and Bachelor of Education degrees from Kenyatta University in Kenya.