Archives: Our Team

Communications Director

Erin Ross became Nexleaf’s Communications Director in December 2023. Erin started at Nexleaf in 2014 and has since served in many roles, including as Communications Manager and Senior Writer. She has written and produced multiple core documents for Nexleaf, including the Nexleaf Values and Data Rights. One of her recent report productions, The Power of Outage Alerts, tells the story of a remarkable new use case for power monitoring tech with lifesaving potential. Erin strives to communicate what matters most about the outstanding and unique data solutions that the Nexleaf team builds, alongside our partners in Ministries of Health and health organizations around the world.

Nikhil D. Patil, MPH (he/him/his) is a passionate global maternal & child health specialist with over 15 years of experience in program management, data analytics, and implementation research. He is focused on the use of novel research methods and technologies to collect better data and support effective, data-driven decision making across health systems in low-resource settings. Prior to joining Nexleaf, Nikhil worked for several organizations including the Task Force for Global Health, CDC Foundation, Gobee Group, eHealth Africa, Innovations for Poverty Action, and RTI International. A former health volunteer with the US Peace Corps in Togo, he holds an MPH in Maternal & Child Health from the University of North Carolina – Chapel Hill, and a BS in Psychology from the Georgia Institute of Technology.

As a Program Support Specialist at Nexleaf, Nikhil provides project management for the co-design and development of the “Rapid Response and Repair” (R3) initiative – country-specific playbooks outlining how to access and use data to fund and operationalize cold chain equipment management and maintenance across all levels of a health system.

Based in Atlanta, Nikhil has lived, worked, and traveled to over 40 countries, and he speaks conversational French and Spanish. When not working, Nikhil enjoys cooking, running, biking, hiking, reading & writing, and spending time with his husband, his two-year old daughter, and their two cats.

Erick Yassin Mgonda is the Technical Account Manager at Nexleaf and has been with the company since 2022. He supports Nexleaf by leading the Remote Temperature Monitoring (RTM) devices troubleshooting team in Tanzania and supports other initiatives to improve training while strengthening our relationship with the Ministry of Health in Tanzania. He holds a Bachelors of Engineering in Electronic Engineering with Information Technology from the Asia Pacific University of Innovation and Technology in Malaysia. He has more than 5 years of experience in solar mini-grid systems. Over the past 5 years, he installed, operated, maintained, and troubleshot 10+ solar mini-grid systems in Tanzania.

Outside of work Erick enjoys playing basketball and cycling. He is passionate about giving back to the community through the work that he does and seeing how it impacts and changes people’s lives both directly and indirectly.

Patience Mfune is a Senior Project Manager at Nexleaf. His role provides strategic guidance to Nexleaf’s interventions in Malawi to engage the Ministry of Health and other vaccine partners to ensure that vaccines are safe to the last mile. He works in country with a global team to ensure that Malawi government has access to the data they need to effectively and equitably deliver potent vaccines to Malawians. Patience brings along to Nexleaf his long-term working relationship with the Government of Malawi and development stakeholders to make sure that discussions between policymakers, supply chain experts, and, health workers in Malawi are driven by data.

Prior to joining Nexleaf, Patience worked with both local and international health and communication organizations in Malawi in various capacities for over ten years. In these roles, Patience’s track record in designing health and communication advocacy initiatives, demand generation, and health – social behavior change communication strategies and models contributed to the success of multi-billion dollar projects.

Patience has worked in projects that are funded by multi-national donor agencies like USAID, DFID, OSISA, KFW, UNESCO, Nike Foundation among others where he designed and implemented game-changing human-centered designs and demand generation strategies that provided a continuum in the project life span while saving lives. In these projects, Patience worked with M & E teams to create data for action strategies to achieve project indicators and maximize results.

Patience is currently pursuing a Master’s Degree in Business Administration with UNICAF University while holding a BSc in Mass Communications from ShareWORLD Open University, Diploma in Journalism from the University of Malawi, and Certificates in Community Development and Project Management by ABMA board.

Edward Gakuru is an experienced Marketing and Sales Executive with over 8 years in the telecom industry, most recently serving as a Senior Manager at Airtel.

Edward holds a Bachelor of Business and Information Technology from Mount Kenya University.

Account Manager, Tanzania

Hosea Michael is Nexleaf’s Senior Customer Operations Manager for Tanzania. He is coordinating management of a multi-state technology-based project in Tanzania; setting up a central service center to manage service support for our devices; handling escalated service issues; supply chain management & logistics; regular field travel to ensure quality of implementation; tracking project priorities and project planning metrics; forming and maintaining relationships with partners, contractors and sub-contractors. He is also responsible for organizing and attending meetings with partners to ensure data is being used for decision making and to attend conferences and workshops as needed in Tanzania and around the world.

Hosea holds MSc in Human Resource Management, BA with Education and an extensive experience working in rural and urban Tanzania on health and socioeconomic related programs in both research and pragmatic sciences. Over the past 8 years, Hosea has been exposed to different programs which include HIV, nutrition, vaccination, systems innovation, electronic systems development and implementation, training and capacity building, organizational development, private-public sector engagement (PPP), research, water, sanitation and hygiene and data use initiatives etc. This drives him to be a massive advocate for e-health improvement and development initiatives and programs as well as the use of electronically generated data to make an informed decision so as to improve immunization and overall health service across Africans and overseas.

Nassem is the Customer Service Manager of Hardware at Nexleaf and has been with the company since July 2022. He holds a degree in Post-Graduation in Middle East Studies from the University of Lucknow, India, and a Diploma in Hardware and Networking for IT. He has 16 years of experience in various industries, such as telecom, e-governance, and clean and renewable energy access. Nassem has hands-on experience in hardware installation and troubleshooting, market research, data collection, analysis, training, and capacity building.

Prior to working with Nexleaf, Paul worked with Vodacom as a call center representative, where he grew as a team leader and trainer. Paul has extensive customer support experience with organizations such as Wananchi Group Tanzania Ltd, 888 Africa, and Burn Manufacturing Tanzania Ltd.

Paul holds a degree in International Relations from the University of Dodoma and Post Graduate Diploma in Economic Diplomacy from Tanzania Mozambique Center for Foreign Relations.

Paul was awarded Vodacom Best Performer in 2021.

Customer Success Engineer

Sushanta is the Customer Success Engineer for Nexleaf’s clean cooking initiative in India. In this capacity, he develops and leads the implementation strategy to bring technology solutions to rural households to address indoor air pollution. This includes engaging local communities, overseeing field testing of new innovations, and leading local capacity-building efforts. He is a main contributor to Nexleaf’s storytelling by capturing stories from the field and supporting content creation for the blog and videos.

Sushanta holds an M.A. in Local Governance from Rajiv Gandhi National Institute of Youth Development, Chennai, and a Bachelor’s degree in computer applications from Utkal University, Bhubaneswar. With his education and prior work experience on the issues of health and climate, Sushanta carries a perfect blend of technology and public management.

He is proud to be part of the Nexleaf team because the organizational values align with his own thinking on the importance of technology-driven solutions at the grassroots level. He also values the opportunity to explore new ideas and collaborate with knowledgeable and expert colleagues. In his spare time, he enjoys reading journals and articles, practicing yoga, and helping the needy.

Geofrey Micah Gundah is a Country Manager at Nexleaf and has been with the company since March 2023. He represents Nexleaf Analytics in Tanzania, aligning local initiatives with the company’s global strategies, objectives, and goals. Geofrey is responsible for building and maintaining strategic relationships, particularly with the Ministry of Health in Tanzania, to drive engagement and impact. He holds a degree in Information and Telecommunication Engineering from St. Joseph University in Tanzania and is currently pursuing a Master’s in Business Administration with a focus on Information Technology Management at the Institute of Accountancy Arusha.

With seven years of experience, Geofrey specializes in Health Information Systems (such as DHIS2, ODK, and CommCare), data analysis (Stata, MS Excel), and information systems analysis and design (including Business Process Modeling Notation (BPMN) and Unified Modeling Language (UML)). He is skilled in Human-Centered Design (HCD), digital transformation through Enterprise Architecture, Monitoring and Evaluation (M&E), and developing both electronic and paper-based data collection tools.