Contraceptives unlock one of the most dormant, but potentially powerful assets in development: women as decision-makers. When women have the power to make choices about their families, they tend to decide precisely what demographers, economists, and development experts recommend. They invest in the long-term human capital of their families.

If you don't invest in the woman, empower her, give her the things she needs to lift her family up, you're just not going to make the progress that you want to make. But if you put her at the centre, you can change a lot for that family, and it has ripple effects through the economy.

Helping people doesn't have to be an unsound financial strategy.

You can have the best vaccines for a woman or her child, but if you can't get her to come and get them then they won't work.

My background was computer science and business school, so eventually I worked my way up where I was running product groups - development, testing, marketing, user education.

Our economies are built on the backs of all this unpaid labor that women do.

I am inspired by the women I meet everywhere I go. They have to work so hard just to make sure their families survive, but somehow they stay optimistic and do everything in their power to make the future better than the past.