Daphne Evans

Beyond Beauty: A Warrior’s Story is a book of triumph, love, tears and laughter – with a shot of “Divatude”.

Daphne Evans is Founder and CEO of Heaven’s Door Cancer Foundation, starting in 2005 after coming home from a double mastectomy. She has also been diagnosed and has survived ovarian cancer in 1998 and metastatic spinal carcinoma in 2009; she has been cancer free since 2010. Daphne has visited hospitals to be with her sisters and has placed cancer patients from the hospital in national magazine photo shoots and fashion runways in the San Francisco Bay Area. Sending thousands of women to spas across the country since 2005 and having girls come with stiletto shoes to take selfies before being wheeled into surgery, her mantra is “We will NOT be defined by our diagnosis.”

Daphne is still a Firm Administrator and Controller Consultant to law firms and eCommerce corporations and has been for nearly 20 years. She is also a fundraiser, public speaker and philanthropist. Nominated for Woman of the Year by Leukemia & Lymphoma Society. Member of Ovarian Cancer Research Fund, Ovarian Cancer National Alliance, The Canary Foundation, Italian Make A Wish Foundation and Society for Oncology Massage. Board of Directors Member of Springfield Leukemia & Lymphoma Society. Founder of Evans Relief Foundation. Daphne is also an ordained minister, feeling it necessary to be with “her girls” from before surgery and in recovery.

Daphne’s parents, Reverend Donald and Mrs. Ida Evans have been her inspiration. Her parents taught her that to help others was a ministry that was not passé. With this shining example and encouragement, Daphne began to volunteer at an early age to care for cancer patients, sometimes staying for weekends to relieve the overtaxed caregivers. She visited Nicaragua after the Sandinista regime and had trucks bring clothing over the bombed out roads for the villagers while she flew in by a Russian parachute plane. She started Evans Relief Foundation and has hosted clothing drives in San Francisco during the tsunami; finding pilots of private planes to fly the supplies to the victims there. She also found jobs for young professionals stranded by Katrina and paid out of pocket to fly them to their new job locations; opening her vacant home to stranded Joplin, MO tornado refugees. Daphne became a member of the Italian Make-A-Wish Foundation and would visit Genoa and speak directly to the children, encouraging hotels to offer free accommodation for the children and their parents. In 2008, she was nominated as San Francisco’s Woman of the year by the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society; devoting 3 months in marathon fundraising. She could never have had the courage or the tenacity to do any of this without her parents showing her that “it is
more blessed to give than to receive.”

All proceeds from this book go towards the purchase Heaven’s Door’s Vacation Home located in Tarpon Springs, FL for women with cancer to have a time away with a loved one. This home will be replete with spa therapy, organic catering restaurants and “Diva counseling” staff, Daphne has promised to make this happen at the request of a number of the cancer divas who have benefited from this charity. She is working toward making this a dream come true. Donations toward this home can be made to: Heaven’s Door Cancer Foundation, 727 Via Casitas, Greenbrae, CA 94904. Heaven’s Door is a 501 (c) 3 charity.