Companies, like ours, can have more than one founding moment.

For us, a key founding moment was when Afia Asamoah joined us - one year ago today - in late November 2021, when Waymark was little more than a very early vision.

We met Afia before any funds had arrived in Waymark accounts, and she leaped in to refine the vision, establish a strategy for building our teams, and put in place our critical legal function. Afia was there to initiate the creation of Waymark, and she has made us a far more effective set of co-founders. Afia built both the legal and people functions of our company, forming our organization from the very fundamental charters and organizational infrastructure, and supporting the growth of our team to now include Waymarkers across more than a dozen states.

Afia’s prior experience has been fundamental to her roles at Waymark. She previously served in the Food and Drug Administration, helping new innovations to be brought to Americans safely and with a focus on equitable access, at a time when health disparities were less of a daily buzzword. She then helped build Google Health and Verily, a life sciences company that has innovated across numerous domains of health technology. Afia brings with her a deep commitment to ensuring that the legal foundations and technologies of our company are directed towards the safest, most ethical, and most equitable principles to ensure that the most vulnerable patients benefit first and foremost from new innovations.

Afia has also established with us the foundational cultural principles and values that now define Waymark. Our values have been deeply shaped by the principles of boldly building our technology and service suite while learning with humility, with focused urgency, and with a bias towards experimentation. Afia lives these values, and reminds us all to live them - especially so when making difficult decisions.

Based on her early and foundational contribution to Waymark, Afia Asamoah is - quite clearly to us - a co-founder of Waymark. We are honored to work with and learn from her as we bring ‘care, guided by community,’ to Medicaid beneficiaries, providers and managed care organizations across the country.