Daina Mandewo

Saïd Business School at the University of Oxford

“Zimbabwean medical doctor and healthcare innovator committed to improving women’s access to healthcare across Africa.”

Hometown: Mutare, Zimbabwe

Fun fact about yourself: When I was 11 years old, I (successfully) gatecrashed a Head of State’s birthday celebration.

Undergraduate School and Degree:

Master of Science in Applied Digital Health, University of Oxford, 2025

Bachelor’s Degrees in Medicine and Surgery, University of Zimbabwe, 2020

Where was the last place you worked before enrolling in business school? Medical Doctor, Emergency Department at Parirenyatwa Group of Hospitals, the largest referral hospital in Zimbabwe. Co-led partnership with Hunan Hospital (China) to establish first-ever telemedicine center in Zimbabwe

Where did you intern during the summer of 2025? Innovations and Investment Intern at E&K Consulting. Reviewed and appraised funding proposals for healthcare grants of US$250K–US$1M across Africa.

Where will you be working after graduation? Founder, HPV Access

I plan to work full-time on HPV Access, a platform I built after my aunt succumbed to cervical cancer in 2023 in order to expand cervical cancer prevention and early detection in African contexts. My focus is on improving access to screening through practical, patient-centered models that address health-seeking barriers as experienced by women in low-resource settings.

Community Work and Leadership Roles in Business School: What matters most to me in community is not simply participation, but reciprocity. Growing up during the 2008 peak of Zimbabwe’s hyperinflation, I saw how deeply survival depended on other people. Neighbours shared what little they had. Families pooled scarce resources. Communities created stokvels to cover medical emergencies. Those acts of collective care stayed with me and ingrained in me the values of ubuntu, I am, only because we collectively are. Much of the community work I have taken on in business school reflects that belief.

As Head of Communications for the Oxford Africa Business Alliance, I have helped shape conversations around African innovation, investment, and leadership within Oxford Saïd. This role matters to me because the stories told about Africa determine the seriousness with which its opportunities are taken. Too often, the continent is framed through crisis rather than capability. Distorted risk perceptions from media stereotypes alone add up to $4.2 billion a year in sovereign borrowing costs. Leading communications has given me the opportunity to shape better narratives about Africa, a commitment which Oxford Saïd shares. In this role, I held a sit-down interview with Rt Hon Mark Simmonds, former UK Minister for Africa and current Chairman of the Advisory Board at Invest Africa, on Oxford Saïd’s work to advance financial inclusion teaching for SMEs and the informal sector across Africa.

Within the wider University of Oxford community, I was appointed social media officer of the Oxford Union in Trinity Term 2025. I am a mentor at the Oxford Africa Society and worked in a team that supported 120 talented prospective applicants from across the continent. I am also an Ubuntu Fellow in collaboration with Mastercard, where I am exploring how African professionals trained abroad can contribute meaningfully to healthcare systems on the continent after graduation. I was selected by the University to speak at Wadham College Women in STEM 2025, a milestone celebration reflecting on women who have contributed to science and entrepreneurship. Alongside my studies, I work with the Nuffield Department of Women’s & Reproductive Health as part of the Fit for Labour team, contributing to work focused on improving maternal care within the UK.

I was awarded the ZONTA Women in Business and Leadership Award 2025 by the UK Club as well as the ZONTA Award for Business and Leadership by the Europe District. Through this award, I have built community with women in leadership and mentors who I look up to.

These roles have been my way of building community, widening access, and using the opportunities I have received in service of others.

Which academic or extracurricular achievement are you most proud of during business school? I am most proud of myself for speaking and winning a historic debate at the Oxford Union on the motion, “This House Believes Profit Motives Have no Place in Public Health.”

I debated against Dr Robert Califf, former Commissioner of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, and Dr Freda Lewis-Hall, former Chief Medical Officer of Pfizer. Although winning was the headline, what stayed with me was the opportunity to examine in the world’s most historic debate chamber, the question that led me to Business School in the first place: what is the role of commercial logic in a system that deals with human survival? Healthcare and Business are often spoken about as if they are in perpetual conflict. Listening to my opponents made me think deeply about how business can be done for good within the healthcare system.

On a personal level, the moment was very significant to me because it was shortly after the death of my grandmother, a woman who had never been granted the opportunity to attend primary school. And now her granddaughter was standing at the Oxford Union, speaking on a global public health issue before some of the most senior figures in medicine and industry. It felt like a conversation across generations. It reminded me that my MBA journey is not just for me. I carry the weight of women before me who were denied it, and with that the responsibility to use it well.

What achievement are you most proud of in your professional career? During COVID-19, fear made  people smaller. It showed up in ridiculous ways, like the panic buying of toilet paper, and in far more damaging ones, like wealthy countries hoarding vaccines before poorer nations got their first doses. I was working as a frontline medical doctor at the time. I was exhausted. The easier response would have been to retreat into survival mode and accept the limits of what I could do.

Instead, with a group of friends, I helped build a biometrics software system that authenticated vaccinations and expanded access to care for 1.2 million people across Africa who had no national identification (including stateless communities and refugees). We worked with governments and NGO partners to create a vaccination verification system that recognised identity based on biometrics. For me, the work we did at VaxiGlobal was about human dignity rather than technology. It was to make sure that during the Coronavirus crisis, everyone got equitable access to vaccinations and no one was left behind due to lack of an ID card.

Working as Head of Operations at VaxiGlobal helped me understand vaccine supply chains. I am most proud of the creative innovativeness we undertook in partnership with World Food Programme and Austrian Development Agency to help governments create vaccination strategies for last mile communities. I got to collaborate with village heads who worked with us to improve vaccine acceptability within their communities.

That experience remains one of the achievements that makes me most proud. In a moment when so much of the world was turning inward, we chose to build something rooted in the idea that our lives are interconnected. The virus made it painfully clear that vulnerability does not remain neatly contained. But it also showed that our solutions can travel too. Working across sectors and alongside public partners restored my faith in our ability to care for one another, even in crisis.

I received the HP Foundation Prize as a Global Changemaker and our team won the inaugural Kofi Annan Award for Innovation in Africa. What matters to me most, however, is what it represented. I am proud that I did not use exhaustion as an excuse to become passive in the face of a challenging system. Instead, it became a reason to help build a better one.

Why did you choose this business school? What set the Oxford Saïd MBA apart for me was its commitment to cultivating ethical leaders. I have experienced the consequences of unethical leadership as corruption and political instability upended Zimbabwe’s healthcare system during my training as a medical doctor. My work in healthcare innovation stems from a desire to drive meaningful social change in Africa. Ethical leadership is central to that ambition.

At Oxford Saïd, that commitment is visible in both the curriculum and the culture of the school. Courses such as Reputation and Leadership, taught by Professor Rupert Younger, ask of us as students to think seriously about accountability and the long-term consequences of leadership decisions. That same ethos extends beyond the classroom. Saïd Business School also hosts a Responsible Business initiative reflecting a broader institutional commitment to responsible leadership.

Oxford Saïd does not simply aim to create leaders, but good ones. It creates a community where we can hold each other accountable to that ethos. I do not want to just lead. I want to lead well. I want to cultivate healthcare teams in Africa who are governed by their morals and not their environment, who will do the right thing even when the right thing is hard.

I want to work in women’s health across Africa and I expect I will face many challenges. I want to solve them in a way that I am proud of. That, to me, is developing healthcare solutions where both the means and the end are not only justifiable. They are good.

Who was your favorite MBA professor? Professor Rupert Younger was my favourite professor at Oxford Saïd. I have lived and worked in Zimbabwe for most of my professional life, and I expect to return. In my context, reputation is not a cosmetic issue. It shapes whether institutions are trusted, whether leaders are believed and whether people feel safe enough to participate in systems at all.

Through Reputation and Leadership, Professor Younger pushed us to think about leadership not only as decision-making, but as stewardship of trust. His work at Oxford Saïd focuses on reputation, responsibility, and purpose, and that framing resonated with me because I have seen what happens when trust collapses in public systems.

In healthcare, this matters deeply. People do not experience systems as strategy documents. They experience them as whether medicine is available and whether institutions can be relied upon when people are most vulnerable. I have thought deeply about that because my work sits at the intersection of healthcare and innovation and because I want to build in contexts where legitimacy cannot be assumed.

I want to go back to Zimbabwe and build women’s health innovations. I know that in environments shaped by political instability and institutional mistrust, leadership has to be morally serious and worthy of confidence. Professor Younger’s teaching gave language and structure to something I had been thinking about for years: that leadership is not only about what you build, but whether people can trust you while you build it.

What was your favorite course as an MBA? GOTO: Systems Thinking was my favourite MBA course because it pushed me furthest beyond my instincts. My background is in medicine and healthcare innovation, where I am often drawn to direct problems and practical solutions. Systems thinking forced me to slow down and look more carefully at the structures around those problems. From the incentives, dependencies, feedback loops, and unintended consequences that shape outcomes long before a solution reaches the end user.

That became especially real to me during our work on a decarbonisation initiative with the team at Vattenfall in London. The project challenged me to think beyond a single company or intervention and instead consider how policy, infrastructure, organisational priorities, and long-term behavioural change interact. It made me reflect on how often failure emanates from misunderstanding the systems for which we are designing. That is what I valued most about GOTO: it gave me a more honest way of thinking. It reminded me that systems do not have a singular hero nor villain. It helped me think about the interconnectedness of it all.

Looking back over your MBA experience, what is the one thing you’d do differently and why? I would share my story earlier. When I first arrived, I was still measuring myself against a narrow idea of what an MBA background was supposed to look like. I came from medicine, not investment banking or consulting, and for a while I convinced myself that my experience was somehow less “business-like.”

Part of that came from being a non-traditional MBA. When you do not come from the most familiar pipelines, it is easy to assume your story needs translation before it has value. I think I spent too much of that first month underestimating the relevance of what I had already done. I did not fully appreciate that leading vaccination operations, delivering emergency care, building in resource-constrained environments and heading operations at a digital health start-up were all forms of business leadership.

I would also have allowed myself to be more comfortable with the fact that I am, in many ways, more of a poet than a quant. Business school can make it easy to admire some kinds of intelligence over others. But I have come to appreciate that I think through language and that this too is a form of influence. Stories shape institutions and words shape how people understand problems, possibilities and each other.

One of the things Saïd Business School taught me is that there is value in sharing non-traditional perspectives with your cohort!

What was the most impactful case study you had in business school and what was the biggest lesson you learned from it? The most impactful case study for me was Trouble at Tessei. It looked at the company responsible for cleaning Japan’s Shinkansen trains in the turnaround that became known as the “7-minute miracle.” The transformation at Tessei was not driven by tighter supervision or financial incentives. It came from restoring dignity to work that had previously been treated as invisible and low status. Under Teruo Yabe’s leadership, the work was reframed as a source of pride and service. That stuck with me because healthcare systems also depend on forms of labour that are often undervalued until they fail. Cleaners, ward aides, receptionists, data clerks, community health workers, laboratory teams, logisticians, and kitchen staff hold hospitals together. When they are given a sense of ownership, health outcomes improve. The case reminded me that human dignity is not peripheral to performance. The biggest lesson I took from Trouble at Tessei is that systems improve when people feel that their work matters. That is something I want to carry forward as I build healthcare innovations.

What did you love most about your business school’s town? What I loved the most about being in Oxford was its insistence that learning can come from people we do not necessarily agree with. From the Oxford Union debates to the seminars across both University and town, Oxford is a place that still believes in the harder discipline of staying in conversation when we would much rather withdraw to our affirmation chambers. Whether in classrooms, over dinner, or after speaker events, there is an expectation that you listen closely, argue carefully, and remain intellectually open even when you are unconvinced. I found that deeply refreshing. It also resonated with something I had valued earlier as a Hansen Leadership Fellow at the University of San Diego, where some of the most meaningful conversations came from learning how to engage people we did not agree with across politics, culture, and lived experience. Oxford sharpened that instinct. It reminded me that disagreement, handled well, is not a threat to community. It is one of the ways a serious community thinks.

What business leader do you admire most? Professor Muhammad Yunus is the business leader I admire most. I had the opportunity to learn from him and interview him before business school in collaboration with Grameen Lab, and that experience stayed with me. He built a microfinance system that gave 7 million people access to credit. What struck me most was that he did not wait for ideal conditions in Bangladesh, nor did he assume innovation had to come from the world’s most powerful institutions. Professor Yunus’s work was founded on a simple conviction: that poor people, especially women, should have access to credit and the opportunity to shape their own futures.

That is how I think about my own work in healthcare innovation and women’s health in Africa. I believe my education does not distance me from Zimbabwe, rather it fortifies my obligation to help improve access to healthcare. I believe meaningful innovation can start right where you are, with what you have, if you remain close enough to the problem to understand it. That is a form of leadership I aspire to.

What is one way that your business school has integrated AI into your programming? What insights did you gain from using AI? Oxford Saïd treats AI as both a tool and a subject of inquiry. The flagship Oxford AI Forum run by Oxford Saïd creates space to think seriously about AI across business, policy, and society. I also learned through the wider University ecosystem and attend talks by the Oxford AI Society. What made that feel especially significant was Oxford’s broader institutional commitment. In March 2025, the University announced a five-year collaboration with OpenAI to advance research and education, and from the 2025/26 academic year Oxford made ChatGPT Edu available to all staff and students.

The biggest insight I gained from Oxford Saïd about AI was that its value depends on judgment. It can accelerate analysis, but it does not remove the need to think carefully; if anything, it makes discernment more important. For Africa, I think that matters enormously. AI could help expand access to knowledge and new markets but the opportunity will only be meaningful if it is built around local context and real problems rather than imported hype.

Which MBA classmate do you most admire? The MBA classmate I most admire is Yukino Arai Ashida. She works in organisational strategy and she has used that work to focus on women’s economic empowerment. In particular, she has worked on employment support programmes for single mothers, partnering with financial institutions to build solutions that are both practical and scalable. Yukino was awarded the Zonta Women in Leadership 2025 and I admire how she has helped women advance in Japan. She is also very thoughtful, kind and a good friend.

What are the top two items on your professional bucket list? My Post-MBA goal is to help improve maternal care in African contexts by developing an AI-driven decision support system that improves outcomes through a tailored and synchronized approach to the “Three Delays” model: delays in seeking, reaching and accessing care. Through an AI-based risk stratification algorithm, the platform will support clinical decision-making and empowers mothers to note early warning signs.

My long-term goal is to eventually transition into investor relations in healthcare-focused venture capital firms to support fem-tech solutions that advance women’s health. Female-owned start-ups are underfunded and the funding gap for women-owned business is a staggering $42 Billion according to the International Finance Corporation (IFC). I aim to amplify innovations led by women, minorities, and African entrepreneurs whose voices are often muffled and under-represented. I plan to personally give back through establishing an incubator program for fem-tech innovations globally.

What made Daina such an invaluable addition to the Class of 2026?

“Daina Mandewo stands out as one of the most purpose-driven and intellectually courageous students in the Oxford MBA Class of 2026. A medical doctor from Zimbabwe, Daina came to Oxford with an already remarkable record of clinical leadership and healthcare innovation, and she has continued to deepen her impact throughout the programme.

Before joining the MBA, Daina served as a frontline doctor in the Emergency Department at Parirenyatwa Group of Hospitals, Zimbabwe’s largest referral hospital. During the COVID-19 pandemic, she helped lead the development of a biometric vaccination verification system through VaxiGlobal that expanded access to vaccines for more than 1.2 million people across Africa who lacked formal identification.

At Oxford Saïd, Daina has continued to exemplify leadership both inside and outside the classroom. She serves on the leadership committee of the Oxford Africa Business Alliance, helping to elevate conversations about African innovation, investment, and entrepreneurship within the school community. She has also contributed more broadly across the University, mentoring prospective African applicants through the Oxford Africa Society and serving in a leadership role at the Oxford Union.

Daina is also an Oxford Laidlaw Scholar and Fulbright Fellow, distinctions that reflect both her academic excellence and her commitment to leadership in service of society. Her academic journey at Oxford is particularly notable: prior to the MBA, she completed a Master’s in Applied Digital Health at the University, building expertise at the intersection of healthcare systems, technology, and policy.

What distinguishes Daina most, however, is the clarity of her purpose. Her work is grounded in a deeply personal commitment to improving women’s health outcomes across Africa. During the MBA she has further developed plans for an AI-driven decision-support system designed to address the “three delays” that contribute to maternal mortality. Her long-term ambition is to combine healthcare innovation with investment, eventually working in healthcare-focused venture capital to support fem-tech and women-led health innovations that are too often underfunded.

Daina’s voice has also been a powerful one in the Oxford community. In one of the Union’s historic debates, she argued successfully on the motion “This House Believes Profit Motives Have No Place in Public Health,” debating against senior global health leaders including a former U.S. FDA Commissioner. Her contribution reflected the thoughtful and principled leadership that defines her approach to business and public health alike.

Daina embodies the spirit of the Oxford MBA: intellectually rigorous, globally minded, and deeply committed to using business as a force for good. She brings together clinical expertise, entrepreneurial thinking, and moral clarity in a way that inspires her peers and strengthens our community.”

Tammy Brophy
Associate Director, MBA Programme

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