Maisha Meds is hiring! Chief Financial Officer / Head of Finance
Jessica Vernon
Maisha Meds is seeking a stellar finance leader to build systems that can delight at scale!
Join Our TeamMaisha Meds is an organization dedicated to improving health care in Africa. We began full-time operations in 2017 and over the past few years has grown to support over 4 million patient encounters at over 1,200 pharmacies and drug shops annually across Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, Nigeria, and Zambia. We are building the financial and technology infrastructure to enable global health funders to pay for health outcomes at the last mile, with an initial focus on malaria case management. Recent results from a randomized controlled trial with UC Berkeley showed that our programs lead to a statistically significant 350% increase in appropriate and high quality malaria care. Based on these results, we are planning to scale the technology to reach over 10,000 health facilities and 20 million patients, and to directly pay for health outcomes for 1 million patients annually by 2024. In addition, we are actively building programs to support injectable contraceptives, HIV pre-exposure prophylaxis, measles and HPV vaccines, malnutrition support, and safe water interventions.
Our work is funded by USAID Development Innovation Ventures, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the Children’s Investment Fund Foundation, Grand Challenges Canada, Pfizer, and others, and we are starting to build partnerships with multilateral global health funders, pharmaceutical companies, and national health insurance funds to have them pay us on a contract basis for health outcomes. We use data from our point of sale software to design programs that leverage financial incentives to improve uptake of high impact health products. And we measure our success by our ability to improve the quality and affordability of healthcare diagnosis, treatment, and prevention for low-income patients across Africa.
About the roleWith strong growth recently, tripling our facility network size in the last 18 months, we believe we have the ability to support 10,000 or more facilities with our software across five countries in the next three years with $10-20 mil+ in ARR. To support this growth, we need robust, automated, simple but scalable finance systems that include real-time grant reporting, support high volumes of small expenses for field operations, and handle high volumes of small $1-2 payments for care. This role will also build tools that track and manage collateral from thousands of facilities that pay us “down payments'' to enroll in our reimbursement program, and provide tax and accounting inputs for new commercialization opportunities. In addition, this person should be sound in providing finance, audit, and compliance oversight for entities in Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, and Nigeria, as well as be comfortable overseeing financials and bookkeeping for a 501(c)3 non-profit and subsidiary for-profit in the United States.
As our CFO or Global Head of Finance at Maisha Meds, you will be responsible for:
Finance team and systems management
Manage a small team of finance professionals within the organization, and work to build their skills and capacity to ready the team for future growth.
Optimize processes across entities in five countries by identifying bookkeepers and auditors to support additional activities as needed and develop finance team org structure.
Build and upgrade financial systems to automate accounting functions, including streamlining our imprest and petty cash system, overseeing transition to NetSuite or other ERP, vet and implement other vendors like Ramp, Stripe, Flutterwave, Verto, and Expensify and build best practices in finance systems development across all entities.
Fundraising, budgeting and external reporting
Own the internal budgeting process and be responsible for monthly reporting on actuals versus budget.
Support quarterly forecasting exercises with unit heads and company leadership
Support funder (grant and debt) relations, including board decks and grant updates, as well as help shape our internal and external financial narrative and strategy
Provide analytical and due diligence support for fundraising activities
Identify and address financial opportunities and risks for the company
Forecast and manage cash flows, ensuring cash is where it is needed, when it’s needed.
Plan and optimize the company’s capital structure
Lead due diligence processes, transaction negotiations, legal documentation
Lead finance-related grant reporting, budgeting, and management
Financial reporting, payroll, taxes, compliance, and audit
Create, update, and present monthly, quarterly, and annual financials for management and board discussion and ensure financial statements and reconciliations are prepared in a timely manner
Oversee payroll and support transition to automated payroll across African entities
Ensure statutory compliance with external financial reporting and taxes
Oversee annual statutory audit process across group companies
Financial planning, analysis, and strategy
Develop and own the company’s overall financial forecasting model
Advance the insight and understanding of the business’ unit economics and KPIs to drive further alignment and accountability across the company
Support pricing for results-based financing contracts, including financial modeling and ongoing reporting
Support other leaders and departments with financial and strategic advice related to geographic expansion, partnerships, and commercialization
Developing reserves policy and investment strategy to build financial resilience
Experience Required
8+ years of progressive finance experience leading a finance team at a high-growth organization of annual turnover >$5m
Bachelor's degree in accounting, finance, business, or a related field (MBA or CPA preferred)
Experience of working in orgs who have entities which operate according to US GAAP; experience of managing finances at a 501(c)(3) and supporting financial grant reporting
Strong prior financial modeling experience in Excel and Sheets, with prior experience developing complex financial forecasts, risk analytics, valuation, financing, or corporate finance models
A problem solver who is ready to personally dig in to find and build solutions useful for all
Show’s empathy in their work, system designs and everyday interactions with teammates, our customers, and the patients we ultimately serve
Flexibility, resourcefulness, and comfort with ambiguity; ability to embrace change and build structure into a less defined work environment
Excellent interpersonal skills - excellent at communication, building relationships and working across all levels of the company
Prior experience in the SaaS or healthcare financing space an advantage but not prerequisite
While much of our team is based in East Africa, this role has the potential to be fully remote for the right person. We’re a small, friendly team that values open communication and mentorship, and we provide benefits including health insurance and 401(k) / pension.
Why You Should Join Us
On a roll: recent funding, new countries, exciting growth in our funder and customer base…things are rolling.
Great team: Founded, managed and backed by successful veterans of Stanford School of Medicine, Google, Safe Boda, Lions Head Investment Bank, I&M Bank. We have technologists, clinicians, and economists working side by side to solve difficult problems.
Great funders: We’re backed by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, USAID Development Innovation Ventures, CIFF, WHO FIND, and Pfizer - their funding provides us catalytic funding to fundamentally change the way health outcomes are funded in the private sector throughout Sub-Saharan Africa.
Large addressable market: Disrupting a massive, growing $50+ billion market for healthcare payments for low-income patients.
Great customers: Serving low & middle income segments sustainably.
Impact: A fun and exciting start-up culture that empowers its people to make a meaningful impact.