Bouba Diemé

I founded Heart of a Giant Foundation in 2018 and we launched programs in 2020. I serve as Executive Director and sit on the board, after six years as Board President. A small core team covers 20+ sites across 10+ neighborhoods, and the work happens where people already are: community centers, food pantries, senior centers, markets. We started in cardiovascular screening and grew into a cardiometabolic model covering hypertension, diabetes, and kidney disease.

Retention was the hard part, because outcomes depend on it. Returning participants improve at close to three times the rate of one-time attendees. Our community health workers are trained, certified, and know the people they're serving.

The most replicable component across other health settings is our operating model. Paper forms designed for field conditions and black-and-white photocopying feed a private and secure record where every measurement ties to a dated event, controlled vocabularies replace free text, and severe blood pressure flags calculate on their own.

We've identified and referred 47+ severe hypertension escalations to partner providers between 2023 and 2025, 22 of them in 2025. A 2011 American Journal of Cardiology study (Deshmukh et al.) found average hospital charges of $25,435 for a hypertensive emergency in 2007. At $20K to $30K per stay, the 22 escalations from 2025 represent an estimated $440K to $660K in cost exposure, if each had led to a hospital stay.

The billing module waited for a signed contract, and we turned down a $35K per month integration engine in favor of open source.

So far we've reached 10,000+ people across all programs, with 1,800+ participants in our cardiometabolic screening and education program, secured $1.2M+ since launch, and helped raise $500K+ for other organizations.

On the policy side we work with the Massachusetts Department of Public Health and the Boston Public Health Commission. Clinically, with Mass General Brigham, Boston Medical Center, Beth Israel Lahey Health, and Bowdoin Street Health Center. We also work with private and corporate foundations. Programs run in the community's own languages.

Building something physical is a different discipline from running a program. It's the one I trained in.

At Enbridge, March to August 2026, I worked across four regions (North East, North Central, Offshore, and Joint Ventures) within a $10M+ Public Affairs, Communications and Sustainability (PACS) portfolio. I managed stakeholder engagement for Vector Expansion in Michigan and Indiana, the Connecticut River Crossing, and projects in Ohio, and owned community relations, corporate citizenship, and media on those projects. I dealt directly with regulators, municipal officials, and community groups.

I helped manage NEXUS and AGT Enhancement and was a leader on the team that stood up new joint ventures and extensions. I directed over $100K in grants. I left in August and moved to Dakar with my family in September.

Before that, at National Grid from 2022 to 2026, I led municipal and community engagement across 20+ Massachusetts municipalities and supported clean energy equity programs. I also led Corporate Affairs on 12+ high-profile projects with the New England President's Office.

This is where health infrastructure projects most often stall: in alignment, regulatory pathways, and community trust.

From 2019 to 2022 I worked inside the Consortium for Energy Efficiency, a 40+ member coalition of utilities, national laboratories, government agencies, and industry organizations across the US and Canada, as Program Manager and Committee Co-Chair. The job was getting members with competing commercial interests to agree on common standards.

In West Africa, I co-founded and ran Yeelen Energy from 2015 to 2017, a self-financed energy services company working in Dakar and Bamako. That included roughly $100K of energy and equipment optimization for Sonatel/Orange Senegal across five sites. I also held meetings and developed projects with USAID. After we moved to Boston in 2016, I wound the company down from there. In 2015 and 2016, I consulted as an energy specialist on sustainability and resilience projects for Dalberg, the Rockefeller Foundation, and the City of Dakar.

I started out on heavy industrial infrastructure as a student engineer with AngloGold Ashanti in Mali and South Africa, 2005 to 2009, then moved into electrical and telecoms engineering in South Africa at Broadband Infraco and Internet Solutions/Dimension Data, 2010 to 2014. From 2017 to 2019 in Boston I advised ePropertyCare on IoT and smart energy product strategy alongside part-time work at Apple, while starting the patient advocacy that became Heart of a Giant Foundation.