Living Goods supports pregnant women and newborns primarily in East Africa, but internationally as well, working with governments to train community health workers. The group provides education and supports women selling food and contraceptives. ¹

In 2020, Mackenzie Scott, the ex-wife of Jeff Bezos, listed Living Goods as one of 116 mostly left-of-center organizations that are driving change. ²

Background

The CEO of Living Goods and 97 percent of the staff are based in East Africa. The organization began operations in Uganda in 2007, and expanded services to Kenya and Myanmar in 2015. The organization seeks to expand health services across sub-Saharan Africa. ³

The organization sells products such as anti-malarial treatments, cleaner-burning cook stoves, water filters, fortified foods, bed nets, and solar lamps. Living Goods notes that hundreds of millions of Africans lack access to products and as a result, thousands of children on the continent die each day. ⁴ These products target what the World Health Organization identified as the leading cause of death for children under five, which were pneumonia, diarrhea and malaria. ⁵

Living Goods sets up door-to-door sales networks of women entrepreneurs in sub-Saharan Africa to sell the products for very low prices. The organization partners with pharmaceutical brands such as P&G and Novartis. This allows the workers to own businesses. ⁶

The organization touts a study from Uganda that says the Living Goods approach costs less than $2 per person each year to reduce the mortality rate of children under five by 27 percent. ⁷

Living Goods set a goal for 2021 to provide health care to more than 25 million people through supporting 34,000 “digitally empowered community health workers.” ⁸

The organization began with 160 community health workers. ⁹ By the end of 2018, the organization was supporting 9,000 community health workers across Kenya and Uganda serving a total of about 7 million people. ¹⁰

Funders

Major U.S.-based donors to Living Goods includes the Clinton Global Initiative, ¹¹ the Barr Foundation ¹², the Chandler Foundation ¹³ and Mackenzie Scott, the billionaire ex-wife of Amazon founder Jeff Bezos. ¹⁴

Scott announced in July 2020 that she was making $1.7 billion in donations to 116 mostly left-progressive organizations. ¹⁵ Among those were to a COVID-19 relief effort by Living Goods partnering with Last Mile Health, a nonprofit that seeks to ensure a health care worker is within reach of everyone. ¹⁶

Leadership

Chuck Slaughter founded Living Goods in 2007. He was the CEO for 10 years. He is now the chairman of the nine-member board of advisors. Slaughter earned a BA in architecture and a master’s degree in public and private management from Yale University. In 1991, Slaughter founded TravelSmith, a travel gear company that grew to more than $100 million in catalog and online sales. He was also a private equity investor. Slaughter is a senior advisor to the TPG Rise Fund. He is also on the boards of Yale University’s School of Management, Tidepool, Dharma Platform, Aspen Management Partners for Health, and the Horace Goldsmith Foundation. ¹⁷

Liz Jarman is the CEO of Living Goods. Jarman joined the organization in 2014 as director of product strategy and was promoted to Kenya country director in 2015. In late 2017, she was promoted to chief strategy officer, and became the CEO in June 2018. Jarman was born in Zambia and spent a much of her career in the United Kingdom at Sainsbury’s, a $30 billion grocery business. She moved to Kenya in 2012 to work with Fairtrade Africa before joining Living Goods. ¹⁸

Lisa McCandless is the executive director in the United States. McCandless joined Living Goods in 2014. She previously worked at Chemonics International Inc., where she led strategy and design for large-scale development projects in Africa. She later became the business development director for Living Goods, and oversaw all business development for East Africa. ¹⁹

Thomas Opiyo Onyango is the country director for Kenya. Previously, he was the general manager for Merck Health Care & Life Science in Kenya. He also worked for Novartis as franchise head for English East Africa. ²⁰

Christine Namayanja is the Uganda country director. She joined the organization in October 2020. She previously worked for Abt Associates as the chief of party for the five-year USAID-funded Voucher Plus Activity. She also worked with Marie Stopes Uganda for more than 16 years. ²¹

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