A podcast about scaling high-impact digital solutions
The High-Impact Growth Podcast is for social entrepreneurs, global development funders, nonprofit leaders and anyone grappling with the challenges of how to build digital solutions that are both immensely impactful and also achieve high-growth.
High-Impact Growth is hosted by Dimagi CEO Jonathan Jackson and CommCare VP of Growth & Strategy Amie Vaccaro.
Jonathan Jackson
Co-Founder & CEO, Dimagi
Jonathan is the Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Dimagi. He oversees a global team supporting digital solutions across the vast majority of countries with globally-recognized partners, and has led Dimagi to become a leading social enterprise and the creator of CommCare, the world's most widely used data collection platform.
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Amie Vaccaro
VP of Growth & Strategy, CommCare
Amie is the VP of Growth & Strategy for Dimagi’s digital platform for Frontline Workers, CommCare. She leads the team responsible for CommCare’s brand strategy. Passionate about bringing together creativity, empathy, and technology to help people thrive, she brings over 15 years of experience in B2B technology product marketing.
LinkedInThe complete High Impact Growth archive, from the first episode to the latest.
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Sasha Gallant on rescuing a portfolio when USAID was dissolved, rebuilding Development Innovation Ventures as an independent fund, and why the biggest wins are usually unglamorous.
Listen nowNexleaf's Nithya Ramanathan on what country ownership actually requires, why so much global health technology ends up in equipment graveyards, and who is left holding the outcome.
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With Abraham Zerihun (Last Mile Health) and Sid Ravinutala (IDinsight). HEP Assist: a generative AI call center supporting Ethiopia’s 40,000 health extension workers, with RAG architecture, local language support, and 6,500+ AI-supported consultations.
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With Pavel Reppo (Finemind). How do you deliver mental health care in a country of 50 million people with roughly 50 psychiatrists? Task-shifting to nurses and midwives in Uganda.
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With Javan Van Gronigen (Donate.ly). Why storytelling beats technology, the ‘random acts of marketing’ trap, and building individual giving that actually scales.
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With Genevieve Smith (UC Berkeley). Why ‘AI for good’ is not enough, and the five lenses every team needs to deploy AI responsibly.
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With Deena Mousa (Coefficient Giving). The frameworks behind one of the world’s most analytically driven funders, and how to find where a dollar does the most good.
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With Brian DeRenzi (Dimagi). Part four of our AI for Good series: what AI still cannot do, hidden bias in frontier models, and the thinking you cannot skip.
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With Dr. Kevin Starr (Mulago Foundation). Why broken funding models are a ‘much needed reality bath,’ and how funders can back what actually scales.
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With Gillian Javetski and Ismaïla Diene (Dimagi). After the 2025 USAID cuts, a radical bet on simplicity and affordability as strategy, not compromise.
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With Jayson Morris. A new playbook for uncertain times: leading through grief, healing, and emergent leadership with authenticity.
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With Raj Kumar (Devex). A post-peak-ODA world: why value-for-money is now survival, and how organizations can shape what comes next.
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With Franzi Gonder. How somatic awareness builds the resilience and presence that leadership under pressure demands.
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With Nithya Ramanathan (Nexleaf Analytics). Why the disruption of old global health models is the opening to rebuild for real impact.
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With the team at Five Talents. What changes when communities, not donors, define success and own their data? Savings-led development across Eastern Africa.
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Stella Luk of GiveDirectly joins Dimagi's Erin Quinn to ask a simple question: what if, instead of deciding what people need, we gave them cash and trusted them to choose?
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Two leaders from Dimagi's People Operations team join the hosts to unpack what it really takes to run a company sustainably for both its employees and the planet, from rebuilding performance management to.
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As USAID cancels thousands of contracts and global aid budgets shrink, two Dimagi managing directors share what the funding cuts mean for partners on the ground and how digital tools can stretch every.
Listen nowThree Dimagi product leaders behind CommCare and SureAdhere on what it really takes to build SaaS for global health: moving from donor-driven projects to a sustainable product model, and why product marketing.
Listen nowNora Lindström of Catholic Relief Services and Dimagi's Erin Quinn on moving global development past extractive data practices, returning insights to the communities they come from, and the evolving role of.
Listen nowDr. Charles Elliott of Cure Violence Global on treating violence like an epidemic, and how a thoughtful data strategy built on CommCare helps frontline workers earn credit, build trust, and prove their impact.
Listen nowA frank roundtable on CommCare Connect, Dimagi's biggest bet: a platform built on four pillars, Learn, Deliver, Verify, and Pay, that lets community health workers opt in to additional work and get paid for it.
Listen nowNan Chen, Co-Executive Director of Africa Frontline First, on the financing challenge behind community health worker programs, and how better money and smarter coordination are moving them from political.
Listen nowDimagi's Gillian Javetski and Dr. Kelly Collins on why the market for digital health software is broken, and what it takes to build products people actually want to buy.
Listen nowLeadership coach Jayson Morris on burnout, the body's own intelligence, and the practical tools that help leaders stay present when everything is uncertain.
Listen nowPart three of Dimagi's AI series. Jonathan Jackson and research lead Brian DeRenzi catch up on a fast-moving field, from low-resource language testing to Open Chat Studio, and how to bend the arc of AI toward.
Listen nowA shared episode from the System Catalysts podcast: how usable donated organs go to waste, and the work to fix a system where preventable deaths happen daily.
Listen nowChesca Colloredo-Mansfeld left the corporate world to co-found MiracleFeet and bet that one simple, low-cost treatment for clubfoot could reach every child born with it.
Listen nowSerial social entrepreneur Jeroo Billimoria on co-creation, collective ownership, and the discipline of getting your own ego out of the way of the work.
Listen nowGlasswing International co-founder and president Celina de Sola on building a community-driven, non-clinical model for mental health care across Latin America and New York City, and using technology and data.
Listen nowAndrea Fletcher and Remy DeCausemaker of the Digital Service at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services on how technology, open source collaboration, and AI transparency are shaping U.S.
Listen nowFour months into Dimagi's AI exploration, Jonathan Jackson and research lead Brian DeRenzi take stock: over a hundred chatbots built, a Gates-funded coaching grant won, and a hard question of how to spread.
Listen nowCategory Design pioneer Chris Lochhead joins our co-hosts to explain why breakthrough impact comes from creating a new category, not competing in an old one, and how NGOs can make their problem the world's.
Listen nowJackie Huh of the Stop TB Partnership and Dr. Kelly Collins of SureAdhere on Reimagining TB Care, a 360-degree, people-centered approach to one of the world's most fatal infectious diseases.
Listen nowMHP Salud's CEO Dr. Maggie Dante and Data and Evaluation Analyst Rachel Udow on a decade of digital transformation, and what it takes to enable and elevate Community Health Workers across the US.
Listen nowJonathan Jackson and Amie Vaccaro introduce Impact Delivery, Dimagi's approach to technology for global health and development that optimizes long term impact while accepting the real constraints of the work.
Listen nowDr. Dixon Chibanda, founder and CEO of Friendship Bench, joins Jonathan Jackson to share how a team of trained grandmothers delivers evidence-based therapy on park benches across Zimbabwe, and the formula that.
Listen nowDr. Girma Tadesse of JSI traces Ethiopia's decades-long path toward a fully paperless community health system, and what it takes to move from collecting data to truly using it.
Listen nowDr. Madeleine Ballard of the Community Health Impact Coalition on the proCHW movement: making community health workers salaried, skilled, supervised, and supplied the global norm, and what that means for.
Listen nowA short Your Questions Answered episode unpacking a learning Jonathan Jackson shared on LinkedIn: after two decades in digital health, the goal is not to be too big to fail, but too valuable to fail.
Listen nowThree of Dimagi's mental health experts join Jonathan Jackson to unpack the global mental health gap, the power of frontline and self-help group models, and where digital tools can scale care without losing.
Listen nowChris Buri, a TB survivor and patient advocate, shares how he contracted tuberculosis from a contaminated cadaver bone and how video directly observed therapy with SureAdhere gave him his freedom and his.
Listen nowHow an idea born in academic research at UCSD became SureAdhere, a commercial venture using video directly observed therapy to transform tuberculosis treatment, told alongside one patient's year on the.
Listen nowDr. Vikram Patel, psychiatrist, Sangath co-founder, and Paul Farmer's successor at Harvard Medical School, on scaling mental healthcare beyond specialists, the active ingredient in therapy, and using.
Listen nowCo-host Amie Vaccaro revisits some of the first Community Health Workers who helped design and test CommCare in Tanzania in 2008, with Gayo Mhila and Dimagi's Global Director of Research, Dr. Brian DeRenzi.
Listen nowReturning to a mango tree in Tanzania, where in 2008 Dimagi co-designed CommCare alongside the community health workers who were its earliest testers.
Listen nowDimagi's Lilianna Bagnoli on resilience as a learnable skill, and how WellMe, a CommCare-based app, aims to guard frontline workers against burnout across languages, geographies, and cadres.
Listen nowDimagi's Brian DeRenzi joins John Jackson and Amie Vaccaro to explore how GPT-4 and large language models could advance equity in global health, from natural-language SMS to voice for non-literate populations.
Listen nowRaj Kumar, founder of Devex, joins Jonathan Jackson to argue that 2023 opens a tougher new era for global development, one that demands a shift from a project mindset to a results-driven investment mindset.
Listen nowPart two of our Lwala Community Alliance series, told in their own voices: three Community Health Workers in Migori County, Kenya describe their journey into the work, a day in the field, and why CHWs deserve.
Listen nowJulius Mbeya, Co-CEO of Lwala Community Alliance, walks Jonathan Jackson through the four pillars of a community-led health model bringing quality, affordable care to the parts of Kenya that bear the heaviest.
Listen nowRecorded at the Global Digital Health Forum 2022, Jonathan Jackson sits down with FIND's Olukunle Akinwusi and Jhpiego's Erica Troncoso on closing diagnostic gaps, designing with frontline workers, and earning.
Listen nowThe script flips: Jonathan Jackson interviews Amie Vaccaro on her path into social-impact marketing and the lessons from building marketing as a horizontal, foundational team at Dimagi, with lessons for anyone.
Listen nowCo-hosts Jonathan Jackson and Amie Vaccaro pause to look back on nine months of High Impact Growth: why they started, what surprised them, the tools they reached for, and what they would tell anyone thinking.
Listen nowLiz Wiseman, author of the bestseller Multipliers, joins Amie Vaccaro and Jonathan Jackson to unpack the leadership research behind getting twice as much from your team, and why mission-driven organizations.
Listen nowFresh from the Global Digital Health Forum, John Jackson and Amie Vaccaro unpack the session John led and a provocation for the field: what if a 10th Principle for Digital Development was to make the user's.
Listen nowDimagi's Lauren Magoun joins Jonathan Jackson at the Global Digital Health Forum to unpack the global mental health gap and how non-specialist frontline workers, supported by digital tools, can help close it.
Listen nowRecorded at the Global Digital Health Forum, Dimagi CTO Clayton Sims joins John Jackson to separate the AI hype from the practical, from language models and biometrics to copyright, on-prem hosting, and what.
Listen nowRecorded at the Global Digital Health Forum, Jonathan Jackson sits down with Jacaranda Health's co-executive directors Nick Pearson and Sathy Rajasekharan on partnering with Kenya's public health system to.
Listen nowMercy Corps' MEL team on moving from fragmented monitoring and evaluation to a connected digital ecosystem, and how standardizing tools across 40 countries fuels program adaptation and faster, more.
Listen nowFresh from the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting in Davos, Dimagi co-founder Jonathan Jackson shares candid reflections on the biggest problems we face and the biggest bets we need to make to create a better.
Listen nowRecorded at the 2022 Global Digital Health Forum, Jonathan Jackson and Rebecca Distler of the Patrick J.
Listen nowInnocent Chiboma of Zambia's Ministry of Health joins Jonathan Jackson to unpack what a whole-of-government approach to digital health really takes, and why it reaches far beyond the health ministry alone.
Listen nowThe final installment of Dimagi's values series. COO Lucina Tse, Chief of Staff Gillian Javetski, Avni Singhal, and Simon Kelly sit down with hosts Amie Vaccaro and Jonathan Jackson to unpack why the team.
Listen nowSimeon Yosefe, Malawi's Head of Digital Health, joins Jonathan Jackson to share hard-won guidance for technologists in global health: align to the government's vision, build for the long term, and replace.
Listen nowPart three of Dimagi's culture series: four team members unpack the value "Evolve by learning and sharing openly," from out-collaborating rather than out-competing to learning candidly from failure.
Listen nowPart two of Dimagi's values mini-series. Lucina Tse, Gillian Javetski, Avni Singhal, and Simon Kelly join hosts Jonathan Jackson and Amie Vaccaro to unpack what it means to lead with empathy and respect across.
Listen nowRecorded on the sidelines of the 2022 Global Digital Health Forum, Nick Martin of TechChange joins Jonathan Jackson to trace a decade of digital health maturing, and why great training, content, and shared.
Listen nowThe first in a mini series on company culture: Jon Jackson, Amie Vaccaro, and four Dimagi team members unpack Be Bold But Humble, the first of Dimagi's newly articulated values, and why how the work gets done.
Listen nowWhen the CDC called at 1am in March 2020, Dimagi went from no solution to a fully deployed, at-scale COVID-19 case investigation and contact tracing system in under six weeks, entering the US market for the.
Listen nowThe inside story of ICDS CAS, the largest digital health project Dimagi has ever taken on, equipping more than 600,000 of India's anganwadi nutrition workers with CommCare, and what it taught the team about.
Listen nowJonathan Jackson and Dr. Kelly Collins return from the 77th UN General Assembly with takeaways on breaking down disease silos, the Global Fund's 7th Replenishment, and the talent gap holding back global health.
Listen nowPart three of Dimagi's 20th anniversary series looks back at 2010 to 2014, when two USAID Development Innovation Ventures grants funded dozens of CommCare pilots across India and pushed the team's learning.
Listen nowTim Wood, the Senior Program Officer who led the Gates Foundation's investment in Dimagi, joins Jonathan Jackson to tell the story of a rare platform-level grant that funded CommCare itself rather than another.
Listen nowFour early Dimagi employees most involved in building CommCare join Jonathan Jackson to retrace the 14-year journey from bespoke projects to a low-code platform, and the design under the mango tree philosophy.
Listen nowDimagi Chief of Staff Gillian Javetski joins Jonathan Jackson to unpack why global health and development reward out-collaborating over out-competing, and what separates good collaboration from bad.
Listen nowDimagi puts a stake in the ground: you cannot reach universal health coverage until the jobs of frontline workers get better. Jonathan Jackson and Dr.
Listen nowIsmaïla Diene and Fatou Sow of Dimagi's Solutions Division on what it takes to bring digital tools like CommCare to national scale, and why deepening partnerships is central to long-term impact.
Listen nowPart three of Dimagi's exponential growth series. Dev More, Sr Director of Product, on scaling CommCare toward a million users by making it as commonplace inside an iNGO as email.
Listen nowRowena Luk, Dimagi's Chief Connector, on building a thriving partner ecosystem of local developers and implementers, and why opening up CommCare as infrastructure is how communities lift themselves out of.
Listen nowDimagi's Director of Engineering Danny Roberts joins Jonathan Jackson to unpack Strategic Priority #2, sustaining exponential growth by prioritizing platforms over projects, so impact can scale without scaling.
Listen nowPart two of Dimagi's founding story: the shift to open source, the launch of CommCare as a SaaS product, the early hires who shaped the company, and how a scrappy group of friends grew into a global.
Listen nowPart one of the Dimagi founding story, told by co-founders Dr. Vikram Kumar and Jonathan Jackson: a chance meeting at MIT, a 15-second decision to join, and a first national medical record project in Zambia.
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