Team
Founder
Gerry is an entrepreneur and innovator. Gerry is also the founder and President of Conflict Dynamics, a not-for-profit organization working in conflict resolution and humanitarian action. Gerry has been working for over 30 years to help people affected by conflicts and crisis, fusing together expertise from medical, engineering and political science fields. His experiences of providing acute medical care to critically ill children in Iraq in 1989/1990 shaped a view of seeking to help those in need in times of crisis. He is a graduate of Trinity College (Dublin) and MIT.
Co-founder
Tarig is an entrepreneur, with experience in strategy, business & research. He is founder of Dalston Consulting Group. Previously he was a Director at Conflict Dynamics International and an advisor to the agricultural consulting firm Badu. He has worked for Crisis UK, the International Crisis Group, the World Bank, and the National Democratic Institute as well as acting as a consultant to businesses in Africa, the Middle East and North America. He is a graduate of the Harvard Kennedy School of Government and the MIT Sloan School of Management.
Senior Product Manager
Gordon is a civic technology expert with experience in product research, design, and development. While at MIT’s Media Lab he founded Deepstream.tv, a tool for annotating newsworthy live streams, which was used by Univision and NBC News, among others. Gordon previously lived in South Sudan for two years where he was Country Director of Internews which pioneered local media and information initiatives, including building a network of community radio stations.
User Research
Dacia has ten years of experience providing support to organizations and companies in strategic planning, programme development, monitoring and evaluation, grant management, research, business plan development and developing curricula for educational programmes. She has worked with both domestic and international non-profit and/or non-governmental organizations, particularly in community development with indigenous communities in Canada and in peace and stabilization, humanitarian interventions, and education in East Africa.
Business Analyst
Ellin Ivarsson is an analyst with 4 years of experience in market research, data analysis and strategy consulting. Over the years, she has become proficient in producing thoughtful and inspired data-driven industry analysis. She has a strong analytical orientation and has experience generating business research and helping businesses understand how they can benefit from their own data production.
Advisors
Shuja Khan is a business executive and investor. He specialises in running customer service businesses that are powered by technology. As Chief Commercial Officer of Cable & Wireless, the Caribbean's largest mobile, TV and broadband provider, he was responsible for marketing, commercial strategy, product management, call centres, digital assets and TV channels. Prior to that he held various commercial leadership roles at Virgin Media, the UK's largest cable provider. Previous to that he spent 10 years working at Deloitte advising both investors and corporations on strategy and execution across a wide range of sectors.
Ahmed El Mahi is an investment professional with over eight years’ experience in making principal investments in European financial assets and speciality finance lending companies. He has advanced graduate degrees in business and public administration with a specific focus on emerging market themes in infrastructure and natural resource sectors and on the ground experience with operating companies in a range of industries in the Middle East and Africa.
David Carlisle has more than a decade of experience working on regulatory affairs. From 2007 to 2012, he worked for the US Department of the Treasury, focused on the development of anti-money laundering policy, and then spent the next 6 years as a consultant advising financial firms on regulatory compliance matters. He is passionate about aiding FinTech companies in obtaining their goals of financial inclusion and enhanced service while achieving best in class compliance practice. He currently works for Elliptic, a London-based provider of compliance solutions for the cryptocurrency space, where he leads regulatory outreach efforts.
Partners
Hedgehog Lab
To deliver on our vision to build peer to peer mobile applications to support systems of mutual aid in East Africa we have partnered with Hedgehog Lab a world beating global technology consultancy that designs and builds software for the worlds best companies including, Lloyds, Microsoft, Santander, Mitsubishi, B&M & now aidx
Highlights
aidx completes the discovery phase of its MVP
In July we completed the discovery phase of our Minimal Viable Product! We will begin building in September.
Big thanks to our partners HedgeHog Lab and to our team Russell Collingham, Toby Li, Duncan Bell, Laura McKay & David Scott
Photo Gallery
Building our MVP with HedgeHog Lab in Newcastle July 2019
Prototyping in Nairobi April 2018
Articles
The Startup
12 Lessons from our experience as non technical founders of a tech company
The Startup
Insights on Africa's Sharing Economy
Medium
Eight lessons from our experience prototyping products for refugees in Nairobi.
Medium
Notes on adapting design sprint methods outside the US context.
Medium
Notes on adapting design sprint methods outside the US context.
52 Insights
The missed opportunity of building technology that supports mutual aid.
Medium
Insights on reciprocity, size, and types of mutual aid gained by a network graph.
Research
Published papers by aidx
Paper 1
How innovative systems of self-help and emerging digital technologies can provide new solutions for refugees
Key insights
1. Refugees are ordinary people facing extraordinary circumstances
2. The majority of assistance that refugees receive comes from within their social networks and communities
3. Financial pooling is one of the most powerful examples of mutual aid
4. Despite its many strengths mutual aid also presents a number of challenges
5. Digital technologies are failing to support systems of mutual aid
6. There is an opportunity to develop new solutions
Contact
