Healthy Brains Global Initiative Inc.

The Healthy Brains Global Initiative (HBGI) aims to transform the way poor mental health is perceived, prevented and treated globally. We use performance-based financing to fund high-impact mental health programs, focusing on the most underserved populations. By contracting service providers on the basis of outcomes, we incentivize innovation and localization — trusting that the people on the ground are the ones who know best how to effect real change — rather than funding processes in a top-down manner. We either contract/fund programs directly, or work as a technical partner with governments. 

The programs we fund will be diverse and address mental health in different ways, from surf therapy for youth with PTSD, to music-making sessions for individuals in early recovery from substance use disorders, to helping new mothers bond more effectively with their babies, to oversight of supply chains to get essential medicines to the clinics that need them. With governments, we might assist them to tackle homelessness or to replace institutions with community care.

In every case, we will look to pay for the results not just throw money at problems with grants. We will pay for tangible improvements in mental health as well as in day-to-day life, such as a return to school or someone finding a job.

To achieve such change in the world requires a special team with the ability to think differently, communicate brilliantly, and work collaboratively, with each other and our wider external partners. The team will also have respect at its core, for each other and for everyone we partner with, from the girl missing school in rural Uganda, to the health care worker on the frontline in America, to the head of a global institution backing us.

We know that we can only deliver meaningful impact for a variety of people if we have a variety of people in our team and are committed to recruiting the best, most diverse HBGI team - geographically and in background and life experience.

We welcome people with lived experience of mental health challenges. Many of our current team and Board have lived experience of mental health conditions and our Lived Experience Council (LEC) members are an integral part of the organization.