Kaakpema Yelpaala grew up in Kenya, attended Harvard, and now lives in Yale, where he's a professor and the new director of the university's health technology program, the New York Times reports.
Yelpaala, who is black, grew up poor in a slum in Nairobi, where he says he couldn't afford private health insurance and often had to wait for a referral from a family member or go to a hospital emergency room for treatment.
"I've been through so much," he tells the Times.
"I've been through so much."
Yelpaala's digital health start-ups in East Africa and the US have focused on providing affordable health care to immigrants, and he tells the Times that he wants to help create policies that encourage more investment in such start-ups.
"Right now the roller coaster is taking him on a policy journey, as he strives to help create policies that foster investment and innovation for health equity in the US, especially by entrepreneurs of color," the Times quotes Yelpaala as saying.
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