This post is part of a series spotlighting the members of 1Day Sooner’s team. They explain how we work toward our shared mission, and offer a window into our organizational culture for those interested in joining us as volunteers, partners, or colleagues.
What was the trajectory that brought you to 1Day Sooner?
I’m a biochemist by training, and I was living and working in Seychelles when the COVID-19 pandemic started. I came across an article on the BBC about a call for human challenge trial volunteers, so I read the article and I thought about it. A couple of days later, I signed up to be infected with COVID-19. If my involvement could somehow contribute to finding a vaccine quicker, then I thought that would be something worth doing.
In my head, the science made sense — I understood disease mechanisms and biochemistry well enough to defend it to myself — but honestly, I think what really motivated me was the idea that hundreds of thousands of other people wouldn’t have to go through what the world was going through.
I didn’t end up getting infected with COVID-19 myself, because of the exclusion criteria. I wrote about this later and argued for expanding the inclusion criteria, since a product meant to be used globally should be tested in trials that are actually global. My decision felt like an isolated one at first, but then I discovered that thousands of other people around the world had come to the same decision, often without having discussed it with one another. That was genuinely gratifying to see, and it pulled me further in. I did some media interviews, and the more involved I got, the more I felt like I was actually contributing to the pandemic response.
Eventually a group of us decided there should be dedicated work on this in Africa, and that’s how 1Day Africa started. I became the first chapter manager. Not long after, I left my government job in Seychelles to focus on this full time.
In your time at 1Day Sooner, have you or your team accomplished something you’re particularly proud of?
A few things come to mind. One favorite of mine, in terms of impact, is our work on the malaria vaccine deployment campaign. We picked this up when almost no one else in the space was pushing to get malaria vaccines to children in Africa faster, right after the R21 vaccine was recommended by the World Health Organization (WHO). Through a lot of sustained effort, we helped get the pre-qualification process completed about six months ahead of the normal schedule. When you consider that roughly a thousand children die from malaria every day, if we’ve somewhat accelerated the process even by a day, it’s still a huge win. But six months? Then you can begin to think about how many children have been spared from potential illness and possibly even death.
For Zambia specifically, we started off with very little traction. Several stakeholders weren’t even aware of the R21 vaccine yet. We engaged with them ahead of the WHO’s own recommendation and engagement meetings, worked through the stakeholder meetings and the application process, and 1Day Africa was in the room when the application was submitted to GAVI for approval. And the first vaccines were actually administered to children in Luapula Province, in Mansa. Having been a part of all the steps felt like watching a complete circle close the way it should. I felt like it was great work to have been a part of.
There have been others, like the vaccine equity push that we worked on with the West African Health Organization. That actually resulted in our proposals being read to and adopted by the assembly of health ministers from across west Africa. We were still a young organization, but I think it was a strong indication of our drive and our potential.
And more recently, there’s the African Medicines Agency (AMA) work. Getting funding for that project at this stage has felt like a real stamp of approval, because we’re running about three months ahead of schedule. I think that speaks to the value of the work and the quality of the team we’ve built.
Can you say more about the AMA work and how it connects to 1Day Sooner’s larger mission?
Well, even the name itself is built around the idea that we should always be looking for ways to accelerate the development of medical interventions, whether they are pharmaceutical, diagnostic, or therapeutic, because getting them to people even one day sooner can translate into hundreds or thousands of lives being positively impacted. The AMA project is rooted in that same philosophy and it has two main aims.
The first is regulatory harmonization for controlled human infection model studies. Right now regulatory timelines vary enormously across African member states. We have countries on record that have approved a medical product in 12 working days. And then we have others that take as long as two years for the same kind of approval. You can see the disparity. A harmonized environment, run through a central body like the AMA, would let manufacturers apply once instead of reinventing the wheel in every single member state. This would give clinical trial teams and manufacturers a predictable environment to operate in.
This issue matters enormously for pandemic preparedness. When you’re dealing with a pathogen that spreads from one country to the next, the speed at which member states respond basically determines whether it gets contained or keeps escalating. If the country where it originates happens to be a slow responder, the whole continent ends up in a very difficult position. Faster, more coordinated decisions give us a real shot at shortening how long an outbreak runs.
The second piece is bringing Artificial Intelligence into the initial review of regulatory dossiers. From our scoping work we’ve found that there are thousands of applications—literally thousands—sitting in the backlog, and a lot of that comes down to how text-heavy the work is. Imagine being the person who has to read a 300-page dossier, not even to make a decision, just to check whether all the required documentation and information is actually there. Then it goes to another office and someone reads it again, and another office after that before any decision gets made. We’re not proposing that AI should make the decisions. There’s no replacement for human judgement. But, we want to use it for that first screening, running each dossier against the checklist so it can move to the next stage far faster.
And when you put the two together, the harmonization and the AI-assisted review, they’re aimed at the same bottleneck. Both shorten the workflow, which means decisions get made quicker, approvals get arrived at more quickly, and the communities get access to therapeutics, technologies and preventatives a day sooner.
Is there a future aspect of your work you’re particularly looking forward to?
The mRNA tech transfer program, which we’ve been involved with since 2022, has enormous potential. It’s a WHO and Medicines Patent Pool-funded program built around setting up mRNA-capable manufacturing facilities exclusively in low-and middle-income countries. The COVID-19 pandemic showed us, in stark terms, what happens when countries banned exports or refused to share licenses even for generics. It was unfortunate to see that, especially coming from countries that had long been seen as global leaders in the field.
The facility in South Africa has already undergone full validation and received its Good Manufacturing Practice (GMP) certification as of May 2026. The program is aiming for 15 such sites across low-and middle-income regions. Having end-to-end mRNA production capacity distributed across countries in the Global South speaks directly to equity and decentralized access, but more importantly, it means regions won’t have to wait on one or two major global players who may end up prioritizing profitable markets over saving lives during the next pandemic. I think that program has some of the greatest potential for impact of anything we’re involved in right now.
Given that you’re managing all of those projects and priorities, what does a typical day look like for you at 1Day Sooner?
Is there such a thing? I guess I do have a bit of a routine. My day usually starts with going through my inbox. I don’t necessarily respond to everything, but I get a spectral view of what I need to be thinking about that day. Then I check my calendar to see where the free blocks are.
The week has its own rhythm. Mondays are for building my weekly report from the prior week, noting what happened, what’s pending, and what needs follow-up. Tuesdays bring our staff meeting, which falls in the evening for me since it runs on Eastern time. That day also covers a check-in on the African Medicines Agency work and follow-ups with collaborators across the CPO countries of Malawi, Tanzania, and Uganda, plus others on efforts like the mRNA tech transfer and other clinical sites we are engaged with. Wednesdays and Thursdays are my most flexible days, so external meetings and new collaborations usually land then. Thursdays also include a team meeting to catch up on everything active across Africa. Fridays I keep intentionally light, giving me a day to close out what slipped during the week and read up on the field.
Beyond that structure, there are recurring meetings tied to specific projects. This includes things like the National Health Research Authority work on Zambia’s clinical trials registry, or partner meetings tied to research grants we’re pursuing.
What’s the part of your job you enjoy most?
If I had to pick one thing, it’s writing the weekly report. It sounds mundane, but it’s become a moment of self-accountability for me. Every week, sitting down and asking: “What have we actually done? What have I actually achieved this week?” Because every week the report is different, it’s new. I enjoy pulling out the wins from the week to share with the team. That part gives me real gratification. It also forces me to notice when a project hasn’t moved forward. Working remotely and independently makes it easy to overlook the balls you’re dropping if you don’t have a system for picking them back up. I appreciate that I have one.
Is there anything about your work that people might find surprising?
Personal connections matter a lot, especially early on. Email is useful for keeping a relationship going, but it rarely starts one, and in this kind of work there isn’t much that replaces actually talking to people.
Our first vaccine equity webinar was the event that really launched the organization, and most of the growth from there came through introductions. A warm introduction gets you in the door faster. You’re not spending the first few conversations proving you’re serious before anyone will engage. The relationships open the door.
When you’re not at your desk, where would we find you?
You’ll likely find me playing chess, which I love, or out running or cycling in the mornings [Editor’s note: or eating an ice cream cone and/or an ice cream sandwich with great enthusiasm]
How can people get involved with 1Day Africa, or partner with the team?
The most straightforward way is to send us an email at africa@1daysooner.org or through cpo@1daysooner.org. We’re also on X and Instagram, and our website has a subscribe function if you’d rather reach us that way.