About Us

Our Mission

At Southward BioForge Group (SBG), our mission is to reimagine how health equity is built, communicated, and sustained. We exist to close the critical gap between medical advancement and practical adoption — ensuring that health interventions are not only developed, but trusted, accessible, and used.

 

As a hybrid organization, we operate across two connected fronts:

  • Through SBGconsult, we partner with global health actors to construct region-specific, behaviorally-informed strategies that expand engagement, amplify impact, dismantle structural barriers, and embed community trust across campaigns, programs, and field operations.
  • Through SBGnews + SBGimpact, we lead public health storytelling, multilingual education initiatives, and youth engagement programs that amplify knowledge equity and promote autonomy in health decision-making.

With autonomy over self at the core of all we do, we combine research, strategy, and voice to support communities as they shape their futures through empowered choice. 

Our Story

Raised in post-apartheid South Africa, founder Bonolo Tshephe witnessed firsthand how stigma, silence, and structural barriers could undermine even the most powerful health interventions. These experiences revealed a critical truth: access is not guaranteed by innovation alone. 

 

While conducting research at New York University, Tshephe recognized this pattern on a global scale, observing how life-saving biomedical tools often remained underutilized even when made economically accessible due to the absence of culturally grounded, community-specific distribution strategies.

 

Drawing inspiration from successful, context-sensitive public health campaigns such as the HPV vaccine rollout in South Africa, she envisioned a model that combined strategic consulting with communication equity. SBG was created to fill that gap. 

 

What began as a youth-driven initiative to translate HIV materials has evolved to deliver the one thing innovation alone has never guaranteed: accessible pathways to lived adoption.