Sarah Throne (l) and Shondra Pistone
BLOOMINGTON, Ill.—Keplr Vision has announced the promotion of Sarah Throne to senior vice president of business operations and Shondra Pistone to vice president of operations. Keplr noted in its announcement that “in the advent of the COVID-19 pandemic, both Sarah and Shondra worked tirelessly, providing leadership across the organization and overseeing initiatives that helped bring clinics back after all were shuttered for at least two weeks.” “The recent months have been filled with monumental challenges requiring real-time, complex decision making on a scale that no one could have ever predicted,” Keplr Vision chief operating officer Adam Rosengren said in the announcement. “These two individuals stepped up and worked tirelessly to help us weather the storm and ensure the safety of our patients and team members.”

Following several positions with marketing agencies in New York City and the Quad Cities area, Throne joined the company in 2016 as a marketing manager, creating the marketing strategies, design, and promotions for all of the company’s All About Eyes clinics. As the company portfolio grew under the Visionary Eye Partners name, her position was elevated to marketing director, where she built a proprietary optician training web portal. (Visionary Eye Partners and Total ECP merged in mid-2019 to operate as a combined entity under the name Keplr Vision, as VMAIL reported.

Shortly thereafter Throne was promoted to vice president of corporate services and assumed oversight of the marketing, business and digital services, retail planning and procurement, and revenue cycle management departments. As Keplr Vision experienced rapid expansion, Throne successfully scaled a central distribution center which once supported 22 clinics to one that currently supports over 160, according to the announcement.

“Very rarely is an organization lucky enough to have someone like Sarah on its leadership team,” Keplr Vision chief executive officer Nick Williams said. “The only thing more impressive than Sarah’s character and tremendous commitment to Keplr is the consistently excellent results she produces day in and day out.”

Pistone joined the Visionary Eye Partners team in 2018 as a district manager and was quickly promoted to regional director, with oversight of a field operations team supporting 38 clinics. As the company became Keplr Vision, she rose to the challenge of managing both a growing field operations team as well as an expansive nationwide portfolio of medically focused optometry clinics.

Before joining Keplr Vision, Pistone gained extensive strategic operational leadership experience in the health care industry, managing business transformation and process improvement as senior business strategy and integration manager, M&A at American Optical Service & Exela Hearing Services, and then as regional director of operations, specialty oncology/hematology at DaVita Healthcare Partners.

“I joined Keplr Vision because I saw a company with a strong moral compass and endless opportunities for success,” she said. “I am proud to say that this organization has lived up to all of its promises.”

Keplr Vision now has a portfolio of more than 160 practices across 29 states, and it brings together private practice optometrists who focus on pushing the practice of optometry forward. Keplr offers OD partners robust business support services and supply chain management, allowing doctors to focus on their practice and their patients while retaining their legacy, according to its announcement.