NEW YORK—A diverse and dynamic mix of speakers, from outside and from within the eyecare/eyewear field will be sharing insights and tactics for business and professional leaders at the VM Leadership Summit, “Insight, Unseen: How Leaders Uncover, Design and Scale Innovation” in New York on March 15. The daylong event for senior decision makers and influencers from throughout the optical industry and eyecare professions will be held at The Times Center, prior to the start of Vision Expo East. Limited tickets are available. Details about registration, more in-depth speakers’ bios and other information is posted at https://na.eventscloud.com/website/49585/. For the 2023 VM Leadership Summit, at presstime, Platinum Sponsors include EssilorLuxottica, VSP Premier Program and Percept. Gold Sponsors include The Vision Council and Luna. The Silver Sponsor is Ocuco.

The goal of the VM Summit program this year is to tackle the challenges business leaders face in a changed competitive environment, address new consumer priorities and perceptions, meet the needs of their employees and discover new ways to elevate vision care.

The 2023 VM Leadership Summit program and speakers will include:





• Rohit Bhargava (https://rohitbhargava.com/) the VM Summit’s opening keynote speaker, is on a mission to inspire more “non-obvious thinking” in the world. He is the three-time Wall Street Journal and USA Today bestselling author of eight books and is widely considered one of the most entertaining and original speakers on trends, innovation and marketing in the world. Bhargava’s talk will be How to be a Non-Obvious Thinker (and See What Others Miss). “When every day brings constant disruption, it’s hard to know where to focus. With the right mindset, we can look to the future with informed optimism,” he noted.

• Jennifer Hauser, managing director, Edelman Health and founder and director, Wellness 360, will analyze exclusive new data from Edelman’s 2023 Trust Barometer, the well-known annual trust and credibility survey. With more than 25 years in marketing and communications, Hauser has advised a range of leading global and U.S. clients who are making transformational advancements in health and wellness.

• Kraig Eaton, principal in Deloitte Consulting LLP’s U.S. Human Capital service area, will present topline results from Deloitte’s 2023 Global Human Capital Trends Survey, the largest longitudinal study of HR, talent, and related technology topics ever conducted. He will explain why organizations and workers must learn to navigate a new business landscape together—co-creating new rules, new boundaries and a new relationship. By doing this, organizations can create impact not only for their business, their workers or their shareholders but for the broader society as well.





• How are companies aligning purpose, people and products to transform workplace culture? Dr. Solange Charas and Stela Lupushor, the co-authors of “Humanizing Human Capital: Invest in Your People for Optimal Business Returns,” will offer practical advice on how to accomplish this by hiring the right people, managing a workforce effectively and optimizing productivity.

• John Whyte, MD, WebMD’s chief medical officer, will share insights about the fast-changing revolution of AI, the metaverse’s potential impact in health care and Chat-GPT. Dr. Whyte is a leading voice in addressing the COVID pandemic and has been named as one of the top 20 health influencers in the world, based on his work in communicating about a range of issues with renowned health care executives and medical leaders.

• Ali Daniels, chief marketing officer and senior vice president for Visit Seattle will talk about how the city is partnering with a lens company, EnChroma to offer new opportunities for colorblind visitors to fully experience art. The Seattle program is one of dozens of cultural and educational institutions that are offering these types of interactive experiences, which also raise awareness of the importance of good vision for consumers and patients.

• Two leading thinkers in the optometric field, Gary Y. Chu, OD, MPH, FAAO and Susy Yu, OD, MBA, FAAO, will join in a fireside chat about powerful new technologies such as PlenOptika’s QuickSee handheld autorefractor that are transforming access to vision care, particularly for populations with health disparities, and accelerating market growth. Dr. Chu is the vice president of professional affairs at the New England College of Optometry. Dr. Yu is the director of business strategy and operations support for Vision Essentials by Kaiser Permanente in Southern California.





• Two optometrists will illuminate the health and wellness trend and how eyecare fits into it. Steven Lee, OD, MBA, an entrepreneur with a medical and engineering background, and Amel Youssef, OD, a successful practitioner and experienced clinician and researcher, will discuss how innovative products, from smart watches to Fitbit—and in the vision care field, EyeQue—are enabling health-conscious consumers to monitor their visual wellness by capturing and analyzing their biometric data which they can then share with eyecare professionals.

• Sharing new science about myopia is resulting in new ways to communicate about it with patients, parents and other health care professionals will be Dwight Ackerman, OD, MBA, FAAO, FBCLA, who is chief medical editor, Review of Myopia Management and International Myopia Institute global ambassador. He’ll speak with Lisa McAlister, who is global myopia lead, at Johnson & Johnson Vision, and recently-elected board chair of the Global Myopia Awareness Coalition (GMAC) a group of industry partner companies who founded the coalition with a mission to promote public awareness of childhood myopia as a treatable disease through direct-to-consumer channels and innovative new campaigns about it.

• Addressing new ways to elevate the eyecare market while doing good and engaging directly with customers, National Vision’s Reade Fahs president and CEO, along with Jacqueline Grove, NVI’s SVP, talent and development; diversity, equity and inclusion; culture and philanthropy will join the VM Summit speaker roster. They will share for the first time some exclusive data and tactics they’ve adopted—which others in the Summit audience can use, too—in a special presentation that will illuminate the impact eyewear consumers can make to expand access to good vision.





• Looking at the issue of accessibility and inclusion for those people with low vision and blindness—as both employees and as customers—Jennifer Sagalyn, director of strategic partnerships of Perkins Access, will join the VM Summit. Her deep understanding of accessibility solutions allows her to guide clients to practical strategies to address access today. Perkins Access partners with organizations of all kinds to help create digital products, services and experiences to engage with all people, regardless of their abilities. The group is affiliated with the world-famous Perkins School for the Blind.

• Bob Safian will join the VM Leadership Summit as the day’s closing keynote speaker. Safian is host of the podcast Masters of Scale: Rapid Response (https://mastersofscale.com/episode_category/rapid-response/), downloaded by business leaders millions of times each month and named by The New York Times as one of its “Podcasts for the Pandemic Era.” Guests on the show include CEOs from Airbnb to Marriott, Instacart to Target, GM to Harley-Davidson, Nike to Peloton, covering topics from AI to autonomous vehicles, sustainability to social impact, leadership responsibilities to talent management, and more. Safian will weave together the themes of VM’s Summit in “Unlocking the Secrets of Scale,” examining what are the modern challenges faced by business leaders, entrepreneurs and established players, and how should leaders and their teams manage through them. His goal is to inspire the VM Summit audience to build new runways and tactics to take advantage of opportunities.

Learn more at the VM Summit registration site at https://na.eventscloud.com/website/49585/.