Andrew Karlyn

Andrew joined eHA’s Board of Directors in January 2017. Andrew is the Strategy and Learning Lead, AgriFin Accelerate at Mercy Corps and is based in Nairobi, Kenya.

Formerly, he served as USAID’s Global Development Lab’s Africa Regional Advisor . In this role, he supported USAID’s digital finance initiatives in health, social protection, agriculture, and democracy and governance programs. Andrew was a principal contributor to The Population Council’s mHealth initiatives. This work spans over 30 projects in HIV prevention and treatment; maternal and newborn health; and poverty, gender, and youth interventions.

Andrew has designed and implemented technology deployments across Africa, including the delivery of pre- and post-test HIV counseling via mobile phones. Additional technology solutions he’s implemented include mobile job-aids and task-shifting tools for low-literate community health workers, the application of mobile phones to survey sampling techniques, and the deployment of point-of-service user self-assessment tools in low-resource healthcare settings. Andrew previously served as the Country Director for the Population Council in Nigeria. Prior to that role, he was the lead behavioral scientist on the Truvada PrEP clinical trial at CDC Botswana. Andrew has worked in sub-Saharan Africa and Asia for over 18 years, providing technical assistance to research initiatives, policy analysis, advocacy development, program design, and monitoring and evaluation systems. He has conducted evaluations for a variety of clients, which include: community-based organizations, host governments, multilateral and bilateral international donors, national and international NGOs, and UN agencies. Andrew has extensive experience working in conflict and post-conflict settings delivering emergency aid and health care, facilitating epidemiological surveillance and social appraisals, and assisting with transitions to sustainable development.

Andrew holds a PhD in Public Health and Demography from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. He earned both his MA in Bio-medical Anthropology and his BA in Anthropology and International Relations from the University of Pennsylvania.