Scaling Impact One Step at a Time: INSEAD and MiracleFeet in Nepal

This blog is authored by Erica Wallace, Florence Coghlan, Isadora Rial and Monica Song.

In February 2025, about 25 INSEAD MBA students representing 15 nationalities swapped the lecture halls of Fontainebleau, Singapore and Abu Dhabi for the snow-capped peaks and vibrant streets of Kathmandu, Nepal. We arrived excited (not just for momos) and with a shared goal: to extend our learning to a real-world, impactful context while helping to improve access to care for children born with clubfoot.

This trip was part of INSEAD’s Business as a Force for Good (BFG) practicum, run in partnership with MiracleFeet, a non-profit working to end untreated clubfoot by supporting national partners in delivering accessible, quality care in low- and middle-income countries.

MiracleFeet’s collaboration with INSEAD began in 2021 through the Master Strategist Day competition. This marked the third BFG practicum focused on helping to scale its impact in the field.

Preparing for the field

Ahead of the trip, we were introduced to MiracleFeet’s mission, model and clinics, including VR footage from past site visits in The Gambia. Working in six teams, we were each paired with national partners from Nepal, Pakistan, Indonesia, and the Philippines. Through virtual meetings and early research, we started to understand the specific challenges each partner organisation faced, though much more would come into focus once we arrived.

Patient stories

One of our first activities in Nepal was visiting two families whose children had recently completed casting the initial stage of clubfoot treatment at the Hospital and Rehabilitation Centre for Disabled Children (HRDC), MiracleFeet’s partner in Nepal. 

After a bumpy drive out of Kathmandu, we were warmly welcomed into their homes, learning, with the help of translators, about the parental experience while watching the children play and being served tea by grandmothers.

The children, now in the bracing stage of treatment, were doing well, but the visits made clear to us the commitment required by families to undertake and complete clubfoot treatment. Multiple long journeys, the need for caregiver support, and ongoing fear of relapse were common to the patients’ stories. 

While highly engaged, the families’ experiences highlighted the barriers to access that others (especially those living further from clinics) struggle to overcome.

HRDC visit

To deepen our understanding of the patient journey, we visited the HRDC, where we spoke with surgeons, physiotherapists, patients and other operations staff who offered valuable insights into the real-life challenges that families face while navigating the treatment process. 

Given Nepal’s complex geography and the iterative nature of the Ponseti treatment method, many patients stay at the hospital for extended periods to avoid long trips back and forth. We were struck by the thoughtful accommodation provided, including an on-site school that helps children stay on track with their education during treatment.

We also had the opportunity to observe a physiotherapist apply the first cast to a young child. Later, we saw how the hospital crafted the specialised shoes used in the bracing phase that children wear for up to four years, adjusted as they grow during regular follow-ups. 

Another thoughtful initiative was a dedicated room for video calls, allowing the HRDC staff to offer remote guidance and support to families living in remote areas.

Co-creating solutions with national partners

Following the visits, we dived into strategy sessions with our national partners. The aim was to co-develop practical, high-impact actions, some that could be implemented quickly (<6 months) and others over a longer horizon (12-24 months).

 Collaborating with the partners in person brought a new level of engagement, allowing us to ask better questions, challenge assumptions, and refine ideas based on real-time feedback.  

With the Pakistan partner, for example, we focused on two priorities: increasing treatment uptake in urban centres and exploring ways to decentralise care to reach rural populations.

Overcoming language barriers to make meaning together, our final recommendations combined the partner’s on-the-ground experience and local insight with our MBA skillsets.

We proposed new intervention opportunities, such as training local vaccination clinic staff to identify and refer to clubfoot cases. We created communication playbooks for one organisation to leverage government partnerships and taught our partners how to use data to tell convincing stories about impact. 

We also drew on our team’s marketing and digital expertise to suggest low-cost, AI-powered social media campaigns to boost awareness and drive referrals.

Sharing our presentations across the larger group, it was clear that each had developed grounded solutions. Some were specific to the partner’s region; others offered ideas with potential for uptake by other partner organisations that could be scaled to other countries.

Final reflections

The week in Nepal was undoubtedly a standout moment in our MBA experience. 

We signed up for a course called Business as a Force for Good and left with a deep belief that it can be. 

We were given an opportunity to apply our business school learning – strategy, design thinking, data analytics, and stakeholder alignment in real time and navigate complexities to harness the power of international NGO collaboration. We bolstered our skills and learned how powerful they could be when applied to real-world challenges in global health. Used thoughtfully, they can help ensure millions of children living with a treatable condition receive the care they need to thrive.

INSEAD is grateful to Aaro Eide (MBA’91J), Georg Madersbacher (MBA’90D), Moondance Foundation, Hugo van Berckel Award, and Andrew Land Fund for their generous support.

This programme is organised and supported by the INSEAD Healthcare Management Initiative.