About Us

Sarah Lupai is a Registered General Nurse and midwifery professional who serves as Lead Ethnically Diverse Patient Experience Liaison Nurse and Nurse and Midwifery Staff Governor at Royal Berkshire NHS Foundation Trust. Her roles place her at the intersection of clinical practice, patient advocacy, and systemic health equity.

Her work at the Trust’s Patient Experience and Engagement Team is built on a conviction: that equitable healthcare is not a bonus — it is a right. Over the course of her career she has developed partnerships across community leaders, local authorities, voluntary organisations, integrated care boards, and primary care networks — building the cross-sector relationships that translate policy intent into real outcomes for real people.

Sarah founded My Maternity Friend because she has seen, from the inside, what happens when maternity services are not designed with all women in mind. The platform is the direct expression of her clinical experience, her community relationships, and her belief that the data gap in maternal health for women from global majority backgrounds is not an oversight — it is a structural failure that requires a structural solution.

Her contributions to health equity have been recognised with the Grassroots Community Award 2024 for Empowering Communities Through Education for Health and Wellbeing, the Royal Berkshire NHS Foundation Trust Care Award 2023 for Outstanding Contributions to Equality and Diversity, and shortlistings at the Nursing Times Awards 2022 and 2023, including the Dame Elizabeth Anionwu Award for Inclusivity in Nursing and Midwifery.

Lord Allan Kenneth Okello is a serial entrepreneur operating across technology, renewable energy, telecommunications, blockchain, and media. The grand nephew of former Ugandan Prime Minister Dr. Milton Obote, he was raised and educated in the United Kingdom and has spent two decades building ventures at the intersection of emerging technology and real-world infrastructure.

His commercial track record spans some of the world’s most significant institutions. Past engagements include HRH The Prince of Saudi Arabia, BNP Paribas, PwC, Deloitte, Aviva, Credit Suisse, BMW, and GSK — a client base that reflects the breadth and seniority of the environments he operates in. Through Arc International, he has advised governments and multinational organisations on large-scale infrastructure development across Africa and the developing world, with a particular focus on renewable energy, telecoms, and blockchain-powered supply chain solutions.

His broadcast career spans credited productions for MTV and Channel 4, with syndicated content distributed worldwide.

As Technical Co-Founder of My Maternity Friend, Lord Okello leads the platform’s full technical build: the data architecture, clinical data pipeline, and the offline-first systems that make the platform viable in low-connectivity, low-resource environments. His background across African infrastructure, digital systems, and international enterprise gives the platform a technical and strategic foundation built for the scale and complexity of the problem it is designed to solve.

Dr. Cynthia Shawa is a dedicated Obstetrician and Gynaecologist with a strong passion for women’s health and reproductive care. She obtained her medical degree from Novgorod State University in Russia and later specialised in Obstetrics and Gynaecology in Zambia. She further advanced her expertise with training in Reproductive Health from the University of South Wales.

With 13 years of experience as a medical doctor and 5 years of focused practice as a specialist Obstetrician and Gynaecologist, Dr. Shawa has built a reputation for compassionate, patient-centred care and clinical excellence. Her work is driven by a commitment to improving maternal and reproductive health outcomes.

In addition to her clinical practice, Dr. Shawa serves as an honorary lecturer at various universities in Zambia, where she contributes to training and mentoring the next generation of healthcare professionals.

As Country Lead and Managing Director of My Maternity Friend Zambia, Cynthia bridges the gap between clinical reality and product design. She oversees medical accuracy for the Zambian context, leads regulatory navigation with the Ministry of Health and data protection authorities, and draws on her professional network to drive adoption across clinics and hospitals in-country.

Her role is not advisory. She is the operational and strategic lead for Zambia — the platform’s first and primary launch market. The decisions about what the app says, how it behaves, and who it reaches in Zambia run through her.

Based in Lusaka, Zambia.

Makini Jones is a strategic leader working at the intersection of public health, health equity, and systems transformation. Currently serving as Equity Officer at Royal Free London NHS Foundation Trust, she has spent over fifteen years across clinical, research, and programme leadership roles in the NHS — including as a Clinical Research Nurse at Barts Health NHS Trust and Royal Berkshire NHS Foundation Trust, Enteral Nutrition Clinical Nurse Specialist, and Health Inequalities Project Manager for Building Berkshire Together.

A proud CORE20PLUS5 Ambassador, Makini leads programmes that improve access to care, address structural inequalities, and centre the voices of underserved communities in the design of health services. She has delivered transformation initiatives recognised by the HSJ Awards and presented at the Royal College of Midwives Research Conference on the PROMISE study — focused on developing principles of engagement to better involve Black women in maternal and neonatal healthcare research.

Her conviction is simple: if research and services do not include the communities most affected by poor outcomes, the solutions will never be fully equitable. That conviction sits at the heart of everything My Maternity Friend is built to do.

Afia Kyerewah is a midwife and passionate advocate for birthing people and their families, committed to ensuring every individual feels heard, respected, and empowered throughout their maternity journey.

Her practice is built on a foundational belief that no two pregnancies are the same. She creates safe, trusting environments where open communication can thrive, supporting people through complex clinical decisions by providing clear, evidence-based information that enables informed choices aligned with their own values and needs.

Afia brings particular expertise in navigating situations where personal choices diverge from standard clinical recommendations — holding the balance between safety, autonomy, and genuinely personalised care. It is precisely this commitment to equity, to individual difference, and to closing the gaps that have long disadvantaged underrepresented communities in maternity care, that makes her a natural fit for the Clinical Advisory Board.

Dr. Kevin Jones is a medical doctor who joined the My Maternity Friend Clinical Advisory Board to provide guidance on medical logic, clinical risk mitigation, and patient education strategy.

His central contribution to the platform’s design philosophy has been to reframe the app not as a diagnostic tool, but as an educational one — equipping women with the knowledge to have informed, confident conversations with their healthcare providers. His influence is visible throughout the product: from the symptom guidance framework to the pain management education module, the app is built to empower, not to replace clinical judgement.

Dr. Jones brings a particular focus on the disparities in pain management experienced by women of colour — a systemic failure rooted in false assumptions about pain tolerance that My Maternity Friend is designed, in part, to address.

Alice Kunjappy-Clifton is the founder of Community United, an organisation that works to reverse negative community health narratives by using culture as a vehicle for health engagement. Her approach is rooted in the understanding that clinical information alone does not change behaviour — trust, belonging, and cultural relevance do.

Alice brings deep experience in community-led health work and sits within networks including the NHS Race Health Observatory, where she is actively scoping the international maternity app landscape to support My Maternity Friend’s evidence base and strategic positioning.

She joined the Clinical Advisory Board to help ensure the platform speaks to the communities it is designed to serve — not just in content, but in how it builds trust.

Khadan Ismail Abdullahi is a nurse with over a decade of experience across maternity, surgical nursing, and women’s health. Her clinical background spans postnatal wards, caesarean recovery, day surgery, and infant feeding support — always delivered through evidence-based, trauma-informed practice with a steady focus on safeguarding and infection prevention.

She is at her best supporting women and families through the early postnatal period, combining clinical precision with the kind of compassionate, practical guidance that makes difficult moments feel manageable. Her particular strengths lie in breastfeeding support, infant care education, and the vigilant monitoring of mothers and newborns in the critical days following birth.

Equity in maternity care is central to Khadan’s practice. Recognised as an Equity Champion, she helped launch the SEE ME FIRST anti-racism campaign and has contributed to service improvement discussions that ensure diverse community voices shape clinical practice. She advocates for women in vulnerable circumstances, including those navigating mental health challenges, and holds a deep commitment to care that is culturally safe, dignified, and genuinely responsive to individual need.

Her colleagues describe her as calm, reliable, and collaborative. She notices what a mother has not yet said, explains feeding cues with clarity, and understands that the small moments of reassurance matter as much as clinical intervention. It is that combination of advocacy, cultural sensitivity, and clinical experience that makes her a valuable voice on the My Maternity Friend Clinical Advisory Board.

Nunu Moyo is a registered nurse with a background spanning critical care and neonatal nursing. She holds specialist training as a Human Factors practitioner — the discipline of understanding how systems, environments, and human behaviour interact to affect clinical outcomes — with a focus on patient safety.

Nunu is a graduate tutor at the University of Edinburgh and serves as Associate Director of Quality for a merging hospital group, where she works at a strategic level to shape the standards and systems that govern maternity care delivery.

She joined the My Maternity Friend Clinical Advisory Board drawn by the platform’s mission to close the gap in maternal outcomes for underrepresented communities — a mission she sees as both clinically necessary and long overdue.