2020–2022
Resolve to Save Lives
In April 2020, at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, I joined Resolve to Save Lives — a non-profit founded by Dr. Tom Frieden, former CDC Director under President Obama. Leading an 8-person cross-disciplinary team, I built products and strategy that supported pandemic response decisions across multiple countries.
The work was deeply technical and required tight collaboration with doctors, epidemiologists, and public health experts who’d spent careers in fields I was learning from scratch. There were moments when I felt out of my depth — but I pressed forward through bureaucracy, setbacks, and the constant stress of a pandemic. This was literally life or death work.
By the numbers
Case Study · 2020–2021
Africa CDC COVID Hotspot Dashboard
Starting in April 2020 with a design sprint to explore how technology could support pandemic response, our team’s central thesis was that “boxing in the virus through contact tracing” would be the most effective strategy. We moved fast — using Google Sheets for data storage and Node.js to reduce server-side development — building under the kind of high-stakes conditions where leaders were using our dashboards to decide whether to shut down cities and countries.
The Africa CDC dashboard tracked COVID cases, tests, deaths, and key outbreak indicators defined by epidemiologists. It was used directly by Africa CDC leaders and the African Union to shape continent-wide COVID response.
Case Study · 2021
WHO Vaccine Credentials
I served as a temporary advisor to the World Health Organization on the creation of digital smart vaccine credentials — a global standard for verifiable proof of vaccination during the COVID-19 pandemic. Working with WHO technical teams, I helped shape the product strategy and design approach for a credential system that needed to work across vastly different technological contexts, from high-resource settings to low-connectivity environments.
The initiative aimed to establish interoperable standards that governments and health authorities worldwide could adopt, ensuring that vaccine records could be trusted and verified across borders.
“Aarron brought structured thinking to problem solving, was a great team leader and collaborator — a rare combination of someone who is skillful at work and wise in life too.”
Rahul MullickSenior Vice President of Technology, Resolve to Save Lives“Aarron brought a calm, empathic style. He managed to direct the team and rally partners to achieve excellent design and product outcomes.”
Daniel BurkaDirector of Product and Design, Resolve to Save LivesCase Study · 2021–2022
ZEBRA
We designed an emergency response platform for the Zambia National Public Health Institute (ZNPHI) in partnership with Resolve to Save Lives, to help the country’s public health teams coordinate during disease outbreaks and other health emergencies. Gloria Nunez led the project and I led the design, working alongside stakeholders from WHO, Africa CDC, US CDC, and ZNPHI leadership through a week-long design sprint that shaped the direction of everything that followed.
Called ZEBRA — the Zambia Emergency Bridge to Response Application — the platform gives incident managers a single place to register events, build response teams, run risk assessments, and track activities across Zambia’s 116 health districts. We designed for the conditions where it actually has to work: low bandwidth, varied devices, and a chain of users that stretches from community-based volunteers in remote villages to national leadership in Lusaka. The system connects to Zambia’s existing surveillance infrastructure so frontline staff and decision-makers work from the same picture during a crisis. We built ZEBRA on DHIS2 — an open-source, web-based health management information platform widely used across Africa and the developing world.
