Daphna Goldschmidt is a former chairperson of Hapoel Katamon Jerusalem Football Club. The first woman in Israel to serve as chairperson of a professional sports club, she is a pioneer in the movement for creating management and other sports leadership opportunities for women in her country. Born in Jerusalem to a family steeped in the city’s soccer culture, Daphna was a founding member of Hapoel Katamon, the first fan-owned club in Israel, in 2007. Her work at the club focused on two key areas: developing programs that promote peace and shared living between people of diverse communities, and creating programs that foster gender equality through sports.

Daphna played a key role in launching the club’s media department and its girls’ and women’s program – the only such program being offered in Jerusalem. She also was involved in one of Hapoel Katamon’s other key initiatives, its Neighborhood Leagues, which bring together individuals from underserved areas of Jerusalem—secular and religious Jews, Muslims, and Christians—for sports activities. This league includes weekly practices, tutoring sessions for participants, and a monthly tournament focusing on fair play and sportsmanship.

Since participating 2018, the number of girls and female participants in the Hapoel Katamon Jerusalem Football Club has doubled and two additional women’s teams have been established. Daphna also founded the Jerusalem Forum for Women and Sports to promote girls’ participation in sports in Jerusalem. In April 2019, she joined the advisory board of the Football Supports Europe network (FSE), an independent, representative, and democratically organized grassroots network of football fans in 48 countries.