NEW YORK—Women continue to leave their mark and make their voices heard in virtually every segment of the vision care field and optical arena. These women of optical fall into several special categories and wear many “hats” including executive, team builder, up-and-comer, and business entrepreneur.

Via networking, coaching as well as education, training and hard work, women are building careers and making contributions throughout every phase of the market and interaction with patients and customers.

In this 7th year of Vision Monday’s highly-anticipated Annual “Most Influential Women’s” report, we continue with the new approach inaugurated in last year’s Special Report. We widened the scope of women we continue to recognize, who make leadership contributions throughout the ECP, retail, supplier, lab, managed care and association landscape.

So we solicited nominations and organized our honorees in four arenas:

• Executive Suite: Candidates are women who hold the positions of president, CEO, CFO, CMO, CIO or COO that guide their companies forward, inspire leadership among their teams and peers and achieve high performance.

• Mentors: Candidates are women who are team builders, developers of talent, who via example or education and training successfully influence others to learn and to grow in their business or professional acumen.

• Rising Stars: Candidates are women who are “up-and-comers” in their careers and within their companies or arenas within the industry; sharp talents who are on their way toward higher levels of responsibility and influence.

• Innovators: Candidates are women who have initiated new product developments or special programs in the arena of marketing, technology or retail, who have spearheaded innovative business ideas or enterprises.

We hope you enjoy reading their profiles of accomplishment as VM celebrates women who make a difference in this challenging and ever-changing world of optical.

Please visit www.visionmonday.com to review an alphabetical listing of past year’s honorees and to read prior years’ Special Reports.
—The Editors.