High-Impact Growth

Disability inclusion in global development starts with a question most teams never ask: who is your technology quietly leaving out? Dr. Victor Santiago Pineda, executive director of Berkeley's Center for Independent Living, president of the global inclusion nonprofit World Enabled, and one of the youngest delegates to help draft the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, joins Amie Vaccaro and guest co-host Erin Quinn for a conversation that moves from a Caracas classroom, where his mother was told her son could never be educated, to the floor of the United Nations, to the frontier of artificial intelligence. Dr. Pineda explains why the assistive technology of today becomes the mainstream technology of tomorrow, why AI trained on averages risks erasing the people at the edges of the bell curve, and what implementers and funders can do differently starting tomorrow: hire disabled technologists, build to WCAG AA, optimize for screen readers, demand accessibility through procurement. Underneath it all is his central claim — we already have enough knowledge to unlock human potential. What's missing isn't know-how. It's the collective decision to use it.
Related Resources:
Podcast hosted by Dr. Victor Pineda: The Independent: Meeting the Moment for Disability Justice available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and YouTube
The Center for Independent Living (CIL), Berkeley – The world's first independent living center, founded in 1972 and now led by Dr. Pineda; the origin point for many principles later written into the UN CRPD.
Pineda Foundation / World Enabled – Dr. Pineda's global nonprofit advancing inclusive urban development, digital equity, and disability rights worldwide.
UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) – The treaty Dr. Pineda helped draft, setting out the rights and dignity of over a billion people with disabilities.
Being Heumann (Apple Original Films) – Siân Heder's film of Judy Heumann's memoir and the 26-day 1977 Section 504 sit-in; TIFF opening night, in theaters November 6 and on Apple TV November 13, 2026.
Protect Section 504 (DREDF) – Tracks the multi-state lawsuit challenging Section 504 regulations that Dr. Pineda references, with advocacy tools.
Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) – The W3C standard Dr. Pineda urges teams to build to at Level AA or higher.
Positive AI Labs – Nonprofit building open datasets and evaluations to steer frontier AI toward pluralistic knowledge of human flourishing, cited by Dr. Pineda as an example of getting wisdom traditions into models before the training loop closes.

Sign up to our newsletter⁠, and stay informed of Dimagi’s work
We are on social media - follow us for the latest from Dimagi: ⁠LinkedIn⁠, ⁠Twitter⁠, ⁠Facebook⁠⁠⁠, ⁠Youtube⁠⁠⁠⁠
If you enjoy this show, please leave us a 5-Star Review and share your favorite episodes with friends. 
Hosts: ⁠Jonathan Jackson⁠ and ⁠Amie Vaccaro

Five years ago, they were mid-level software engineers. Today, they hold giving accounts larger than major foundations — and the sector they want to fund may not be ready to absorb the money. Nick Allardice, CEO of GiveDirectly and former CEO of Change.org, joins Amie and Jonathan to unpack his widely discussed article "The Absorption Problem" and what the "third wave" of philanthropy means for global development. Nick explains why the biggest risk isn't money going to the wrong place, but money sitting on the sidelines for lack of credible places to put it — and why he regularly refers major donors to other organizations to "grow the pie, not divide it." The conversation digs into the voltage drop (research suggests 50–90% of programs lose substantial impact as they scale), why nonprofits rarely ask what their total addressable market is, and how GiveDirectly is winding down complexity to prepare to move much larger sums. Nick closes with candid advice for the newly wealthy: give away 10% of your net wealth in year one, learn by doing, and don't disconnect from the joy of giving.
Related Resources:
The Absorption Problem by Nick Allardice
The Overlooked Absorptive Capacity of Locally-Led Organizations by Jonathan Jackson and Neal Lesh
The Third Wave of American Philanthropy by Nan Ransohoff
Increasing Our 2026 Allocation to GiveWell's Recommendations to $1 Billion by Coefficient Giving
The Voltage Effect: How to Make Good Ideas Great and Great Ideas Scale by John A. List

Sign up to our newsletter⁠, and stay informed of Dimagi’s work
We are on social media - follow us for the latest from Dimagi: ⁠LinkedIn⁠, ⁠Twitter⁠, ⁠Facebook⁠⁠⁠, ⁠Youtube⁠⁠⁠⁠
If you enjoy this show, please leave us a 5-Star Review and share your favorite episodes with friends. 
Hosts: ⁠Jonathan Jackson⁠ and ⁠Amie Vaccaro

Could a funder deploy $100 million in global health tomorrow and know where every single dollar went? Dimagi CEO and co-founder Jonathan Jackson believes verified service delivery finally makes the answer yes. In this candid mid-2026 check-in, Jon joins co-host Amie Vaccaro, VP of CommCare Growth and Strategy, to unpack a year of profound change including why Dimagi retired its longtime value "embrace complexity for impact" in favor of "solving the right problems for impact," and what that shift reveals about affordability in a post-USAID funding landscape. Jon walks step-by-step through a single Connect-enabled home visit, from opt-in push notification to real-time payment, and shares the numbers behind the platform: over 1.5 million verified visits, 200+ local organizations expressing interest, and 80 cents of every dollar reaching frontline workers, local organizations, and commodities. The conversation also explores how AI is putting program design directly into the hands of local organizations, automating roles, not people. As Jon puts it: "When you do a better job today, the system knows it and can offer you even more work tomorrow."
Related Resources:
Dimagi Connect – Dimagi's verified service delivery platform connecting funders with local organizations and frontline workers.
CommCare by Dimagi – The open-source platform for frontline workers that Connect is built on, with a quarter million active users worldwide.
GiveWell – The evidence-based charity evaluator whose request for information on post-market malaria rapid diagnostic test surveillance inspired Dimagi's AI-built Connect pilot.
Steel Foundation for Hope – An early flagship funder that Amie credits with seeing Connect's potential.
Kevin Starr episode of High-Impact Growth – https://dimagi.com/podcast/funders-power-to-change-the-system/ 
Eric Ries episode of High-Impact Growth – https://dimagi.com/podcast/podcast-eric-ries-good-companies-go-bad/ 
Kikapu Gardens field visit video – https://drive.google.com/file/d/1MLGVhiA0YCt_NpjuF4Gveu1s3kwygD7-/view 

Sign up to our newsletter⁠, and stay informed of Dimagi’s work
We are on social media - follow us for the latest from Dimagi: ⁠LinkedIn⁠, ⁠Twitter⁠, ⁠Facebook⁠⁠⁠, ⁠Youtube⁠⁠⁠⁠
If you enjoy this show, please leave us a 5-Star Review and share your favorite episodes with friends. 
Hosts: ⁠Jonathan Jackson⁠ and ⁠Amie Vaccaro

What does it really mean to make a profit — and why do so many mission-driven companies eventually betray the very things that made them great? In this episode, Eric Ries, creator of The Lean Startup and founder of the Long-Term Stock Exchange, joins Amie Vaccaro and Jonathan Jackson to discuss his new book Incorruptible: Why Good Companies Go Bad and How Great Companies Stay Great. Eric dismantles the conventional definition of profit and offers a radical replacement — profit as the maximization of human flourishing — then explains "financial gravity," the unconscious pull that bends organizations toward the values of whoever holds the money, whether investors or donors. Through the origin stories of Costco and Novo Nordisk, he shows how "mission lock" structures protected both companies — in Novo Nordisk's case, preserving the research that became Ozempic and creating over $500 billion in shareholder value. The conversation closes with practical power for everyone else: a "no-courage activism" question any job candidate can ask, and why every transaction you make transmits your values. As Eric puts it: "You're not stuck in traffic — you are traffic."

Related Resources:
https://theleanstartup.com/ ⁠– Eric's foundational methodology and NYT bestseller on entrepreneurship and continuous innovation.
Long-Term Stock Exchange (LTSE) – The stock exchange Eric founded to support companies built for long-term value creation.
Answer.AI – The AI R&D lab founded by Eric Ries and Jeremy Howard.
B Lab / B Corp Certification – The certification body behind B Corps; Dimagi was the first B Corp/PBC in Massachusetts, referenced in the conversation.
Novo Nordisk Foundation – The mission-guardian foundation whose governance structure blocked the merger that would have killed GLP-1 research.

Sign up to our newsletter⁠, and stay informed of Dimagi’s work
We are on social media - follow us for the latest from Dimagi: ⁠LinkedIn⁠, ⁠Twitter⁠, ⁠Facebook⁠⁠⁠, ⁠Youtube⁠⁠⁠⁠
If you enjoy this show, please leave us a 5-Star Review and share your favorite episodes with friends. 
Hosts: ⁠Jonathan Jackson⁠ and ⁠Amie Vaccaro

In a single program area in northern Nigeria, contraceptive use climbed from 2% to over 70%. This change wasn't caused by a new technology, but happened because of one new strategy: centering trust. In this episode, Jonathan Jackson and Amie Vaccaro sit down with Klau Pakos, CEO and co-founder of Lafiya, to unpack how their organization closes the "last mile" gap in family planning in some of the hardest-to-reach communities in Northern Nigeria. Women in these communities often already know about contraception, but too often travel hours to a clinic only to be turned away empty-handed. Lafiya's answer is the Lafiya Sisters — trusted local health workers who bring counseling and self-injectable contraceptives directly into communities. Klau shares the visceral reality of women facing extreme maternal mortality risks, walks through how Lafiya became a true partner to the government rather than a vendor with a fixed model, and explains why they resist the pull of shiny new technology until it's proven necessary. As they put it, family planning "brings the foundation for everything else", creating ripple effects across health, income, and autonomy that data alone can't fully capture. A candid, practical conversation for anyone trying to scale impact alongside government systems.Related Resources:
Lafiya  – Klau's organization, which trains local "Lafiya Sisters" to deliver family planning counseling and self-injectable contraceptives to underserved communities in northern Nigeria.
D-Prize – A seed funding organization that awards grants to entrepreneurs testing new business or charity models that distribute proven poverty-intervention technologies
Charity Entrepreneurship – An incubator program that helps founders launch high-impact, cost-effective charities.
Rethink Priorities: Cost-Effectiveness Analysis of Lafiya Nigeria – The independent modeling Klau references, estimating Lafiya's cost per DALY averted and per maternal life saved.
Sayana Press (DMPA-SC) via Pfizer – An all-in-one, self-injectable contraceptive that lasts for three months and is optimized for low-resource environments due to its lack of a cold chain requirement.
https://www.fp2030.org/ - A global partnership dedicated to advancing rights-based family planning, which the Nigerian government has contributed to for over a decade.

Sign up to our newsletter⁠, and stay informed of Dimagi’s work
We are on social media - follow us for the latest from Dimagi: ⁠LinkedIn⁠, ⁠Twitter⁠, ⁠Facebook⁠⁠⁠, ⁠Youtube⁠⁠⁠⁠
If you enjoy this show, please leave us a 5-Star Review and share your favorite episodes with friends. 
Hosts: ⁠Jonathan Jackson⁠ and ⁠Amie Vaccaro