Simprints
CEO & Co-Founder
London, UK
Toby Norman is the CEO of Simprints, a nonprofit tech company with a mission to radically increase transparency and effectiveness in global development. Simprints build inclusive digital ID powered by biometrics to ensure that every vaccine, every dollar, and every public good reaches the people who need them most. Studies prove Simprints increases impact through real-time, precision data, for example increasing maternal health visits by 38% in Bangladesh or accurate HIV tracing by 62% in Malawi. Working with partners like Gavi and Mercy Corps, Simprints has worked in over 17 countries helping deliver health, aid, and finance to >2.5M people.
Toby holds a PhD from the University of Cambridge on a Gates Scholarship and a BA from Harvard. He is a Forbes 30 Under 30 Social Entrepreneur, Schwab Social Entrepreneur of the Year, and GLG Social Impact Fellow. His work has been covered by The Economist, Wall Street Journal, BBC, CNN, and Harvard Business School’s 2023 case study “Is Passion Enough for Simprints to Thrive?”
Offer
I believe we can transform the fight against poverty and disease with the right technologies. We should be able to trace a life-saving malaria vaccine or humanitarian aid to a real human being with the same basic precision we have when ordering takeout. Yet still today we live in a world where millions of kids go without vaccines and hundreds of millions of dollars of aid are wasted every year. If we're going to build climate-resilient health systems and equitable aid during crises, we need a new approach. My niche is social entrepreneurship, specificially the intersection of global health (years of living and working in frontline programs as a researcher) and technology (9 years building and deploying digital ID with Simprints).
NEED
We're grappling with two challenges: 1) how do we solve the technical challenge of biometric digital ID for infants <1 year old - it's hard science! - and 2) how do we build sustainable revenue models that power our impact
Call-to-Action
Climate change is going to drive more humanitarian crises than we've seen this century and expand the reach of deadly diseases like malaria or dengue. If we're going to beat this, we need to radically improve our ability to ensure aid and healthcare gets to people in need.
