After being stranded by a typhoon in an isolated region of Sub-Saharan Africa, Amy Lehman was driven to provide health care for the communities there by creating the Lake Tanganyika Floating Health Care Clinic/Water-based Aid, Value, Engagement. Lehman earned both an MD and an MBA from the University of Chicago in 2005 and went on to a residency at the University of Chicago Hospitals and a senior fellowship at the MacLean Center for Medical Ethics. However, she struggled to consistently operate due to severe nerve damage in her right arm from a childhood autoimmune disease. Shipwrecked by a typhoon while on vacation on Lake Tanganyika, the longest freshwater lake in the world, she saw how the local communities were cut off from vital medical services. In 2008 she created LTFHC/WAVE, an organization that created a floating hospital and research center on Lake Tanganyika that worked to improve public health and promote environmentally responsible development in the four countries surrounding the lake: the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Tanzania, Burundi, and Zambia. As of 2024, LTFHC’s major project is the development of Iroko Health, an app designed to centralize health documentation while preserving the systems that local health care workers are accustomed to using. Lehman is also working on a partnership with the University of Chicago to create new models to improve supply chain issues in the region. 

Amy Lehman is a grantee of the Jewish Women’s Foundation of New York (JWFNY), and is featured as part of a partnership between JWA and JWFNY spotlighting Jewish women social entrepreneurs.