Joe Agoada Email & Phone Number

In 2005 I took up a volunteer position as a community health worker in rural Uganda, where I spent many moons doing village outreach to increase access to HIV testing and treatment. The local health professionals taught me the wisdom and ingenuity required to break down barriers to healthcare for those in the hardest-to-reach communities.From there I went on to learn how to design appropriate technology solutions for the most remote, low-resource settings through a tenure at the Development Lab (D-Lab) at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. I worked for inventors and community leaders and gained insights about the power of collaboration, creativity, and innovation. After solo traveling across India and Africa to sharpen my understanding of how to successfully implement community-based solutions I was hired by UNICEF and spent four years mobilizing tech to help children live healthy lives. I led projects across Africa and Latin America, getting my first experience of delivering solutions at scale. After receiving an advanced degree from Johns Hopkins University, I sharpened my professional focus to outbreak response and pandemic prevention. I helped lead the development and implementation of a national disease outbreak hotline in Cambodia and ran a series of hack-a-thons in hot zone countries that brought together technologists, epidemiologists, and government leaders to build networks, knowledge, and new ideas for preventing pandemics. In October 2019, I founded the nonprofit Sostento, shifting my attention to addressing barriers to healthcare access in the United States, with a starting focus on the opioid crisis. I had no idea at the time that a few months later I’d be called to action in response to a once-in-a-generation pandemic.COVID-19 supercharged the growth of Sostento as we helped thousands of health workers get the resources and support to respond to the public health emergency and enabled hundreds of thousands of individuals to break down barriers to testing, treatment, and vaccination. In 2021 our work was recognized by the United States Health and Human Services with a $7.2 million funding award that allowed us to grow a national network and reach. Today I lead a Sostento team pursuing a vision that nobody falls through the cracks of our healthcare system. There are millions of people who still cannot access the healthcare they want and need, and I am on a mission to change that fact.

Listed skills include International Development, International Relations, Nonprofits, Strategy, and 17 others.