Daphne Sorensen Joins MiracleFeet as President
New position adds strategic leadership capacity to MiracleFeet’s growing team and impact.
MiracleFeet welcomes Daphne de Souza Lima Sorensen as its first president, a new role reporting to CEO Chesca Colloredo-Mansfeld. With 20 years’ experience in international development, leading teams across Latin America and Africa—and expertise in child rights and rights-based programming—Sorensen adds strategic leadership capacity to MiracleFeet’s growing team and impact. She will oversee global operations and staff, allowing Colloredo-Mansfeld to focus on major and institutional fundraising, external relations, and the organization’s long-term strategy to end clubfoot disability through sustainable access to treatment.
Sorensen joins MiracleFeet from the Lumos Foundation, where she served as regional director for Latin America & Caribbean programs. For more than a decade prior, she held leadership roles at Save the Children, as country director in Bolivia and provincial program manager in Mozambique, and CARE as program coordinator in Brazil. Fluent in English, Portuguese, and Spanish, Sorensen has also lived and worked in Uganda, Angola, Guatemala, Panama, and El Salvador.
Daphne brings deep experience leading high-quality health programming—working extensively with governments, local organizations, and global donors for many years.
“Daphne brings deep experience leading high-quality health programming—working extensively with governments, local organizations, and global donors for many years—and the passion, energy, and drive that MiracleFeet needs to achieve our vision of ending clubfoot disability globally. I am thrilled she is joining us and excited for what we will accomplish with her intuition, creativity, and strong orientation to justice as she leads our global team and partnerships,” said Colloredo-Mansfeld.
“Daphne has a rare profile of skills and global fluency that will strengthen—if not accelerate—MiracleFeet’s ambitious work to end a leading disability. We led an exhaustive search and found in Daphne someone with deep, proven experience leading large-scale programs that improve lives, and a profound passion for child health,” said board chair Mark Pavao.
Born in Brazil, Sorensen grew up in Venezuela, the United Kingdom, and United States. She earned her master’s degree in Leadership from Duquesne University and bachelor’s in International Studies and Development and Economics from American University. With her husband and daughter, she relocated to Chapel Hill, NC, where MiracleFeet is headquartered, from Panama this summer.
I am passionate about fighting for the rights of children, especially the most vulnerable.
“I am passionate about fighting for the rights of children, especially the most vulnerable, and I strongly identify with and support MiracleFeet’s approach to ending clubfoot disability through quality local programs, increased access to sustainable treatment, and advocating for policies to better serve marginalized populations,” Sorensen shared. “Indeed, much of my career has been spent doing exactly these things, and I’m excited to join the MiracleFeet team and contribute to the important work of ending the lifelong disability caused by clubfoot, a long-overlooked health inequity.”
About MiracleFeet
Founded ten years ago, MiracleFeet has grown from one university-based partnership treating clubfoot in Brazil with three North Carolina-based staff, to a global team of 25 providing technical, logistical, and financial support to 600+ medical providers who treat clubfoot at 300 clinics in 29 countries.
Together, these partnerships reach approximately 25,000 children each year actively receiving treatment. By comparison, in 2005, fewer than 500 children in all low- and middle-income countries combined received proper care. And despite the pandemic, MiracleFeet’s growth has not slowed, with new programs in three countries—Sierra Leone, Morocco, and Guinea—as well as significant expansion in India in 2020.
