The defining moment

I can trace my sense of purpose and inspiration for VisionSpring to a defining moment when I was 23 years old. While on a volunteer medical mission in the Yucatán Peninsula, I arrived at the project site to find 2,000 people waiting in line to have their eyes checked.

One of those patients was a 7-year-old boy, carrying a book in braille. The boy’s family explained he was blind from birth. Yet, as I examined his eyes I observed he wasn’t blind at all. Rather, he was extremely myopic—meaning his sight could be corrected with just a strong pair of glasses.

I rummaged up a pair of donated glasses and gently placed them on his nose and watched as his blank, blind stare transformed into an expression of unadulterated joy. He was seeing the world for the first time.

As I provided the boy his sight, he provided me with a keen sense of purpose and novel understanding: the only thing standing between 2.5 billion people and their ability to get an education, earn a living, return home to their families safe and sound at night, and fulfill their human potential is a simple pair of glasses.

And so began my desire to replicate this moment thousands of times over, culminating in the founding of VisionSpring and changing millions of lives across the globe, one pair of glasses at a time.