About Us

Bold thinking. Actionable insights. Optimal impact.

image description
image description

Our mission

Empower decision makers to improve lives through sustainable technology.

image description

Our vision

A world in which the transformative power of data is fully harnessed to enable thriving societies everywhere.

Our values

image description
Innovation

We combine state-of-the-art technologies and knowledge to develop cutting-edge solutions.

image description
Sustainability

We co-create solutions that are long-lasting and scalable.

image description
Empathy

We seek a deep understanding of our partners’ vision and needs.

image description
Excellence

We strive to produce the highest quality work that exceeds our partners’ expectations.

What we do

BAO Systems is an industry leader in digital data solutions for health and development. We empower our partners to implement scalable and sustainable solutions that uncover data-driven insights to improve livelihoods, strengthen health systems, and achieve equitable human development.

Our team comprises passionate public health and development practitioners, information system experts, software engineers, system engineers, monitoring and evaluation advisors, and data scientists. We excel in providing a broad spectrum of services and products.

image description

Our leadership

image description
image description
image description
image description
image description
image description
image description
image description
image description
image description
image description
image description
Steffen Tengesdal Chief Executive Officer, Co-Founder

Steffen has over 20 years of experience in senior-level IT technical and management positions. He has owned and operated several successful IT businesses, including development firms, hosting companies, and an IT consultancy. Steffen has experience serving commercial, government, and non-profit organizations. His expertise is focused on enterprise web application design & development as well as IT operations & infrastructure management in public health and international development.

image description
Dr. Adebusoye (Busoye) Anifalaje President, Co-Founder

Busoye brings more than two decades of experience in global health, data management, digital transformation, and international development informatics. He has driven the company’s growth across sectors including international public health, education, humanitarian emergency response, and food security. Busoye holds a PhD in Information Systems from the London School of Economics and has played a key role in building enterprise data solutions that strengthen decision-making across international development.

image description
Lars Helge Øverland Chief Product Officer, Co-Founder

Lars is a software engineer and architect with more than 20 years of experience in building web and integration solutions. He brings deep expertise in systems architecture, databases, data modeling, data analytics, and web API design. He has been the lead developer of DHIS2, the world’s largest information system within the international development domain, since its inception in 2005.

image description
Katherine Lew Chief Data Officer

Katherine is a public health professional with over 15 years of experience in monitoring and evaluation, health information systems strengthening, and data analytics, visualization and use. Having worked in multiple countries across Asia and Africa, she has keen insight into the data needs of our partners. Katherine builds and maintains partner relationships, conducts market research, and recommends services and products, helping to drive company strategy and impact.

image description
Abraham Neudorf Chief Financial Officer

Abraham has over 20 years of executive finance experience across SaaS, healthcare technology, manufacturing and M&A. Prior to joining BAO Systems, he was a Finance Director and Business Unit Controller for a multinational healthcare company, owned a small manufacturing and retail business, and led financial operations in networking and server manufacturing companies. Abraham is a Certified Management Accountant (CMA) and holds an Executive MBA from the University of New Hampshire, and a business degree from Pensacola Christian College.

image description
Dan Cocos Senior Vice President of Operations

Dan has over 20 years of senior technical and business leadership.  Has created, grown and maintained tech teams and has proven experience as a people leader building tech teams from scratch.  He is a technical advisor on system architecture, deployment, maintenance, and security and compliance for software systems and product development (GDPR, FISMA, HIPAA, SOC 2).  Leads teams of developers across the full SDLC and CI/CD using Agile/Scrum to create a predictable and repeatable process and is a cross functional team leader experienced in communicating to internal and external clients

image description
Rodolfo Melia Vice President, Solution Architecture

Rodolfo is a solution architect with over 25 years of experience designing, deploying, and managing information systems for health and international development organizations. Before joining BAO Systems, he founded and led a health information systems and data interoperability consultancy. As VP of Solution Architecture, he leads the design of DHIS2 and diagnostics connectivity solutions, including ConneX, which connects point-of-care testing devices to national health information systems.

image description
Timothy Harding Director of IT

Tim brings over 15 years of technical leadership to his role as Director of IT, where he oversees hosting operations, cloud engineering, and enterprise architecture, including serving as Enterprise Architect on key client initiatives. A specialist in delivering complex health information system and DHIS2 solutions, he has managed global rollouts, including Vanuatu’s migration from Microsoft Access to DHIS2, and maintains metadata libraries for the PEPFAR MER Program. His international experience, spanning the Peace Corps and BAO Systems, covers Africa, the Middle East, Southeast Asia, and Vanuatu.

image description
Rachel Lucas Vice President, Growth & Strategy

Rachel builds relationships with federal, state, and foundation stakeholders and shapes strategy for BAO Systems’ business development portfolio. She brings more than 20 years of experience at USAID, including four years as Chief Data Scientist leading enterprise data transformation for a $6 billion global portfolio across 80 countries. Rachel holds a Ph.D. and M.A. in Sociology and Demography from the University of Michigan and a B.A. in Sociology from the University of Washington.

image description
Sarah Searle Senior Director Data & Informatics

Sarah is an experienced public health program implementer and manager with a strong interest in expanding access to, and use of, data for informed decision making. Her background spans health information systems in low- and middle-income settings, with a focus on HIV/AIDS and reproductive and maternal health. She has worked across NGOs, academic institutions, and data and technology companies.

image description
Oluwasanmi Adedokun Country Director - Nigeria

Oluwasanmi Adedokun is a Public Health Physician with strong leadership and strategic thinking capabilities. For over 16 years he has led cross-functional teams in program monitoring and evaluation of HIV, Malaria, and Reproductive health programs; population-based surveillance surveys; operational research; as well as development and implementation of digital solutions including electronic medical records systems, health information systems, and data repositories.

Our offices

Washington, DC
2900 K St. NW
Suite 506
Washington, DC
20007, USA +1 (202) 536-1543
Get directions image description
Abuja
Block B, Flat 5
29B Ndjamena Crescent
Wuse 2
Abuja, Nigeria
Get directions image description
Lisbon
Rua Gregório Lopes
Lote 1639, Loja
1400-407 Lisboa, Portugal
Get directions image description
Cambridge
50-60 Station Road
Cambridge
Cambridgeshire,
CB1 2JH, UK
Get directions image description

Spotlight

image description

Connected devices, disconnected data: what it takes to close the gap

In distributed health programs, the weakest point in the data chain is rarely the laboratory or the clinic. It is the gap between a diagnostic result and the national system that is supposed to receive it.
read more
image description

Fragmented by design: why Caribbean disease surveillance couldn’t cross borders

Across the Caribbean, health systems built to protect national data ownership created an unintended gap in cross-border disease surveillance. BAO Systems examines the governance and architecture work required to close it.
read more
image description

BAO Systems & NACCHO Partnership Announcement

We’re excited to announce a new partnership between BAO Systems and National Association of County and City Health Officials (NACCHO) to support public health departments and the communities they serve…
read more
image description

BAO Systems and Telecom 26 Announce Strategic Partnership

Telecom26 and BAO Systems announce a partnership to support secure and scalable digital public infrastructure. The collaboration combines DHIS2-based data platforms with secure global connectivity to support reliable data-driven programs.
read more

Subscribe to our newsletter

By subscribing, you agree to the processing of your personal data by BAO Systems per our Privacy Policy.
You can unsubscribe via a link in the email.