Bright Simons

Bright Simons is a technology innovator, development activist and social entrepreneur. He is President of the mPedigree Network, a social enterprise working with governments, companies, and organisations to promote innovative technologies in the areas of health and food security, transparency, and governance. His latest work on the application of “smart polymers” to health cold-chain problems has been supported by Harvard Innovation Labs, among others. Prior, he was Director of Research at the IMANI Centre for Policy and Education in Ghana, where he helped steer the organization's award-winning research activities.

Bright is a Member of the World Economic Forum's Network of Global Agenda Councils and Technology Pioneers communities. He is also an Ashoka Fellow, TED Fellow, Salzburg Global Fellow, Tech Museum Laureate and a Brain Trust member of the Evian Group at IMD. In 2010, he was conferred with an Archbishop Desmond Tutu Award by the African Leadership Institute. In 2013, he was named to the Advisory Board of IC Publications, a leading Pan-African and Afro-Diaporan publisher.

As a board-level advisor, Simons’s commitments include the Microsoft Africa Advisory Council, the Lancet Commission on the Future of Health in Africa, the World Economic Forum’s Africa Strategy Group, IMANI Center for Policy and Education, and the Ashoka Globalizer initiative. In 2016, Fortune magazine named him to its World’s 50 Greatest Leaders list.