President & CEO Report

At SightLife, patience is not one of our virtues.

We know we can eliminate treatable forms of corneal blindness around the world. We see evidence every day as our global partners restore sight to the blind following SightLife's innovative, proven capacity-building model for successful eye banking.

What we realized in 2013, however, is that we weren't eliminating it fast enough. At the rate we were going, it was going to take us 250 years to accomplish our mission.

We simply can't wait that long.

So, we put our passion for our mission to work and took action. We expanded our reach by opening another eye bank laboratory in Irvine, California to help meet the local demand for corneal tissue. We reached out to social enterprise investors and innovators who, like us, are solution-driven, and invited and encouraged their participation. We attracted the attention and support of The Goradia Foundation, which offered us a challenge grant of $6M in support of our mission.

We did all of this because of transplant recipients such as 20 year old Rajni, who was born blind but whose life has been transformed by the gift of sight and 6 year old Afsana, who wept when she was finally able to see her father’s face for the first time.

There are many others like Rajni and Afsana who are still waiting in darkness. Each day, thanks to your support, we are that much closer to providing the gift of sight to them as well.

Eliminating corneal blindness,

Monty M. Montoya
President & CEO
SightLife