2006 Annual Report
Jennifer Staple
Founder, President and CEO
Jennifer Staple founded Unite For Sight during her sophomore year at Yale University in fall 2000. During the previous summer, Jennifer worked as a clinical ophthalmology research associate. While interacting with low-income patients, she learned about eye diseases that could have been prevented by early medical intervention. Their poignant stories made her recognize the need for community programs to promote eye health, motivating her to found Unite For Sight.
Under Jennifer's leadership, the organization has grown from a community-based Yale student organization in New Haven, Connecticut, to a global nonprofit organization. She has created 90 chapters throughout the world, developed international programs that provide sight-restoring eye care to more than 200,000 people annually in Africa and Asia, and she coordinates an annual global health conference that convenes more than 2,200 participants from 60 countries. Since its inception, Unite For Sight has provided eye care services to more than 600,000 people worldwide. More than 80,000 volunteer hours of direct eye care service are contributed each year by the approximately 650 volunteers at university chapters and the 250 volunteers who travel abroad annually to assist at Unite For Sight's partner local eye clinics. Hundreds of additional volunteers participate each year in other capacities, including graphic design, web design, and fundraising.
A cum laude graduate of Yale University, Jennifer frequently speaks about social entrepreneurship, eye care, global health, and international development. Her most recent audiences have included students at Harvard School of Public Health, Yale Law School, Yale College, Stanford University, York University, and ophthalmologists at the American Academy of Ophthalmology's Women in Ophthalmology Leadership Institute.
In 2007, Jennifer was awarded a BRICK Award, which honors and funds change-makers age 25 and under who identify problems and do something to change the world. CNN dubbed the BRICK Awards "the Oscars of youth service awards." Celebrities who have been involved in the BRICK Awards include President Clinton, Susan Sarandon, Jimmy Fallon, Mary J. Blige, and Jewel.
Jennifer has been featured in The New York Times and is on CNN International's Be The Change television segment weekly between September 2007 and September 2008. She has also been featured in the book Our Time is Now: Young People Changing the World, as well as in many other publications. Selected for a leadership honor by the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, she was also named to the 2003 USA Today All-USA Academic First Team honoring the top 20 college students in the United States. In 2002, she was named one of the "Top Ten College Women in America" by Glamour Magazine. She was also honored by The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation as a winner in the Young Epidemiology Scholars Competition. She also received the 2004 Global Youth Action Network's Global Youth Action Award as well as the 2004 YouthActionNet Award from the International Youth Foundation and Nokia for leading positive change throughout the world.
Dr. Bernard Kouchner, Co-Founder of Doctors Without Borders (Medecins Sans Frontiers), wrote about Jennifer in the book Our Time Is Now: Young People Changing The World: "Over the centuries, most leaders have sought to bring about change through military intervention. I've tried to mobilize people to undertake another strategy - humanitarian intervention. Every citizen has the right to receive care and live with dignity, and national boundaries and political or financial circumstances cannot influence who receives that support. Through her work to expand the fight against blindness around the globe, Jennifer Staple has intervened in some of the world's poorest communities to ensure that their citizens, too, can lead healthy and productive lives."
Eric J. Bertrand
Eric Bertrand is current Director of OptiCare Health Systems, U.S. Vision, Control F-1 and Versura, Inc. Since 1997, he has been Director of Palisade Capital Management, an affiliate of Palisade Concentrated Equity Partnership, L.P. From 1996 to 1997, Eric held a position with Townsend Frew & Company, a healthcare-focused investment banking boutique. He holds a Master of Business Administration in Finance and Entrepreneurship with a certificate in the Digital Economy from New York University as well as Bachelor of Science in Business Administration from Bryant College.
Sachin Jain
From surveying the homeless in inner-city Chicago about barriers to health care to founding a cataract surgery program in rural Tanzania, Sachin Jain has been working to increase access to needed health services and strengthen health care infrastructure in resource-poor populations internationally. Sachin, Unite For Sight's Director of North America Initiatives, first became involved with Unite For Sight when he founded a chapter at Rush Medical College. As a Schweitzer Fellow, he also founded the first medical student-run Ophthalmology clinic in Chicago. In the summer of 2004, Sachin traveled to rural Tanzania as a Unite For Sight intern to implement several eye care initiatives, including a cataract surgery program and eye health education in local schools.
Sachin was honored with an Albert Schweitzer Fellowship in 2004 and was recently awarded the Health Award by the Health & Medicine Policy Research Group for his contributions to public health and work with underserved populations. Sachin also served as a national leader of the American Medical Student Association from 2005-2006. He holds a Master's of Public Health from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, and he will receive his MD from Rush Medical College in June 2008 before pursuing residency training in Internal Medicine at Yale University. His special interests include infectious disease prevention, promoting health as a human right, and eliminating health disparities.
Sally Ong
Originally from Johor, Malaysia, Sally completed a double major in Biology and Political Science at Duke University. Sally is involved with service-learning initiatives, including participating in a course entitled "Humanitarian Challenges at Home and Abroad FOCUS program" and she taught a course entitled "Service Learning: Expanding Your Duke Education beyond the Classroom." While a student at Duke, Sally served for several years as President of Duke's chapter of Unite For Sight. She also participated as a Unite For Sight volunteer in Tanzania, China, and Ghana. She is fluent in English, Mandarin, Malay, Fujian, and is learning Italian.
Yasha Modi
Yasha Modi is a medical student at Yale University School of Medicine. He received his Bachelor's Degree from New York University, where he majored in psychology and minored in chemistry. Yasha was the founding President of the NYU Undergraduate Unite for Sight chapter. His interest in Ophthalmology began in the LRBT Free Eye Hospital in Korangi, Pakistan where he spent two of his high school spring breaks as a volunteer observing cataract surgeries and comprehensive eye exams. His background in research started at the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center where he used NMR resolution techniques to elucidate unusual DNA-quadruplex structures in solution. Since then, he has published his findings in the Journal of American Chemical Society and the Journal of Molecular Biology. He has also pursued research in the Division of Cardiothoracic Surgery in the Department of Surgery/Cell Biology at New York University Medical Center. There, he studied the MAP Kinase intracellular pathway in balloon-injured arteries in a dog model.
Julia Nemiroff
United States Program Director
Julia Nemiroff graduated Summa Cum Laude from New York Institute of Technology (NYIT) in 2007 as a Biology major. Julia's grandmother is blind because her macular degeneration went untreated during the early stages in Russia. Hoping to help prevent blindness due to such causes, Julia founded a chapter of Unite For Sight as a senior at NYIT. Under her leadership, the NYIT chapter ran a number of successful vision screenings, particularly helping the underserved preschool population. The NYIT chapter also raised the most money in 2007, and was awarded Unite For Sight's Humanitarian Service Award and Chapter of the Year Award. Julia currently volunteers at a Pediatric Oncology Laboratory at Columbia University Medical Centre, and plans to attend medical school in 2008. Julia's interests include international health care, ophthalmology, oncology, literature, art, piano, and yoga.
Dr.Tamilarasan Senthil M.B.B.S, D.O.,F.I.C.O
Director of India
Dr. Senthil completed M.B.B.S and Ophthalmology Residency at Sri Ramachandra Medical College and Research Institute Chennai India. (S.R.M.C) .This institute is a Harvard Medical International Affiliated institute in India.
His aim is to make eye care affordable to everyone. He wants to bring a "Wal Mart" kind of revolution in eye care in India.
While a medical student and resident at S.R.M.C, Dr. Senthil involved himself in a lot of community outreach programs in eye care and was the Resident Director of Community Outreach Eye Camps. He helped organize 150 eye camps in a two year period, and 1,200 patients received free eye surgery during the time. He was also involved in Phase 2 FDA trial of the drug Moxifloxacin by Alcon as a study team member.
Dr. Senthil has associated himself closely with Vision Foundation which is the nonprofit arm of Uma Eye clinic which is one of the top eye care facilities in Chennai, India. He is in the forefront of Unite For Sights programs in India for the past 2 years and has helped many Unite For Sight volunteers gain an insight on eye care in India.
He was instrumental in the making of the Unite For Sight Film "An Eye Opener in India," which debuted i n April 2006 at Unite for Sight's Third Annual International Health Conference at Yale University in Connecticut.
Because teaching is his passion , Dr. Senthil works as a consultant in S.R.M Medical College and Research Centre in Chennai, where he teaches undergraduate students. The hospital is surrounded by 80 villages, and Dr.Senthil designs the community outreach programs and eye surgeries for these villages, providing free eye care to 1.2 million villagers.
Dr. Senthil is also in private practice in eye care in Chennai and is an excellent anterior segment surgeon. He runs a model low cost eye clinic, which provides people with the best facilities. His special interests are in Hospital Management and also in Marketing of Eye Hospitals. His long term aims are to build an Optometry School and Free Eye Hospital in Chennai, as well as implement eye care microenterprise programs for villagers.