Building Trust, Scaling Impact: How Thato Schermer Is Shaping the Future of Women’s Health

MASHSTARTUP

In South Africa and across the continent, millions of women still face healthcare that is expensive, fragmented, and impersonal. For far too long, care has been treated as a service, not a relationship. And when the system fails, it’s community — not institutions — that women turn to for support.

Zoie Health was born in that gap.

Built from lived experience and guided by community insight, Zoie is a digital health platform on a mission to redesign access to care. It’s not just about virtual consultations or medication delivery — it’s about building a system rooted in trust, dignity, and humanity.

At the centre of this vision is Thato Schermer — a founder who isn’t just chasing growth, she’s solving for care at scale. She’s proving that you can lead with empathy, build with purpose, and still move with urgency.

In this episode, we unpack how Thato and her team are turning pain into product, story into structure, and community into infrastructure — one decision at a time.

Because real innovation isn’t just about technology.
It’s about who you're building for — and who you're building with.