Emmanuel Otoo Joins MiracleFeet as Director of Programs, Jen Everhart Named Technical Director
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MiracleFeet’s leadership team expands to support global progress in preventing disability for children with a leading, treatable birth defect.
Emmanuel Otoo joins MiracleFeet as director of programs, with decades of experience leading community-driven, power-shifting change for social justice issues—with the Wellspring Philanthropic Fund, the Global Fund for Children, Free the Slaves, the United Nations Development Program, and other organizations—throughout Africa and the Middle East. He will support the expansion of national partnerships to implement high-quality, evidence-based programs treating children with clubfoot in low and middle-income countries. As MiracleFeet’s new technical director, Jennifer Everhart, who has overseen various aspects of programs for over 8 years, including leading global programs for the past 3.5 years, will oversee training, quality, and clinical program activities worldwide.
Founded ten years ago, MiracleFeet has grown from one university-based partnership treating clubfoot in Brazil to a global team providing technical, logistical, and financial support to 650+ medical providers who treat this leading birth defect at 320 clinics in 29 countries. These partnerships reach approximately 25,000 children each year actively receiving treatment. In 2020, MiracleFeet achieved an important milestone towards integrating clubfoot treatment with other rehabilitation services in primary healthcare delivery—a role on the USAID-funded Learning, Acting and Building for Rehabilitation in Health Systems (ReLAB-HS) consortium led by Johns Hopkins University International Injury Research Unit (JHU-IIRU).
pictured in PT Magazine.
In her new role, Everhart will serve as MiracleFeet’s technical lead on the ReLAB-HS project, while providing senior oversight of all service delivery components across programs—including treatment quality, adherence, and training of health care providers. She will work to safeguard the quality, relevance, and impact of clinical activities in support of children with clubfoot and their families, as the organization expands into new countries.
A physiotherapist with over 26 years of experience in global health rehabilitation, Everhart has lived and worked in Cote d’ Ivoire, where she provided community-based physical rehabilitation to underserved populations for the Peace Corps; served as the physiotherapy coordinator in Angola for landmine victims; and managed a rehabilitation project in Niger with the country’s first clubfoot treatment clinic. She is a member of the Global Clubfoot Initiative’s technical working groups, contributing to the development of resources and best practices in clubfoot treatment.
Emmanuel Otoo is a native of Ghana who has lived, traveled, and worked in 30+ countries, most recently for the Wellspring Philanthropic Fund, where he facilitated community-led efforts to achieve inclusive quality education for marginalized children as program officer for the International Children’s Education Program. Prior to that, he served as interim executive vice president at The Global Fund for Children (GFC), where he led strategic programmatic and organizational initiatives, and simultaneously, held the position of regional program director, Africa & the Middle East, responsible for a portfolio of over 60 organizations in 19 countries in sub-Saharan Africa, North Africa, and the Middle East.
Prior to his work at GFC, he was the regional director for Free the Slaves in West Africa, and he acquired substantial field experience while working with the United Nations Development Program in their Ghana Field Office and with the International Labor Organization/International Program on the Elimination of Child Labor (ILO/IPEC). He has also served as a facilitator of community engagements and a catalyst for equity and growth working with various organizations, such as Plan International.
Otoo received his BA Honors in Sociology, Executive MBA in Project Management, and his MA in Social work all from the University of Ghana. He is based in the metro Washington, DC area, where he lives with his wife and their two teenage children.
