From a Tripoli hospital in 2019 to healthtech

In 2019, during the civil war in Tripoli, Tayma Almezogy was a medical student. She volunteered as a paramedic in one of the largest hospitals in the city during a severe shortage of healthcare providers. "Working so closely with the healthcare system during conflict completely changed my mind," she says. She saw talented doctors doing everything they could for patients, and she also saw "how broken systems and limited access were exhausting both providers and patients."

That experience, she says, pushed her to think beyond individual patient care toward system-level solutions. It is what led her to Speetar.

“If success were easy, everyone would have done it. It is unique because it is hard.”

Tayma Almezogy

Speetar is a Libyan healthtech startup behind one of the first telemedicine and electronic medical record platforms in Libya, designed to expand healthcare access to rural and conflict-affected areas. She joined as an associate and grew into roles in operations, HR and project management. She later led the Women and Children Care Project, supported by the WFP Innovation Accelerator, which she says reached more than 350,000 beneficiaries, and the Mental Health Support Project after the Derna floods, in partnership with SAMS, where the team supported around 3,500 survivors.

Before Speetar there was student work. She co-founded SOMA, a platform that supports medical students with educational resources and study guidance, helped lead Qarar, which supports high school students in choosing their university paths, and won first place in the debating club. She is the oldest child in her family, "and I think that shaped a lot of who I became," she says.

Now a graduate of the University of Tripoli's Faculty of Medicine, she recently joined Atarona Venture Studio as a Venture Support Lead, working with founders and early-stage ventures on healthcare, education and financial inclusion across growth markets. As part of that role she has started working in academia, on an EdTech platform she says carries more than 400,000 students to date. Her aim there, she says, is "to make sure that higher education goes without borders". Her next step, she says, is to deepen her understanding of venture building and healthcare innovation so she can help replicate and scale platforms like Speetar across the MENA region.

"I still carry medicine with me," she says. "What matters most to me is helping build systems and ventures that improve people's lives and create stronger communities."