The Eyes Have It

Jordan Kassalow believes what he cant even see.

Written by Darren Gluckman

et there be light. Its the first explicit statement of creation. But it didnt have to be that way. He could have made the whole thingthe plants, the fish, the reptiles, the birds, the mammals, and manand then, and only then, once everything was set, flicked on a universal light switch. So whats light doing there, right at the beginning? As Tina Turner mightve asked: Whats light got to do with it? Astrophysicists might postulate that all matter is derived from that original burst of light, the notorious Big Bang, and that without light, matter and, by extension, time and space itself couldnt exist. But mystics have suggested another reason: Light is given pride of place, right there at the start, to teach us that the point of creation, the reason for this beautiful, variegated universe, is that we see it. That we use our eyes to appreciate the wonder of thingsand thereby to stand in wonder at their Creator. Seeing, after all, is believing. Its no accident, by this line of reasoning, that our eyes are located above our other sensory organs, on a plane slightly above our ears. In a relaxed chat late on a Sunday afternoon, Dr. Jordan Kassalow doesnt wax metaphysical. Hes just back from a walk with Griffey, his dog, on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, watching runners cross the finish line of the New York City Marathon, and taking in the fall colors on the trees in Central Park. He is, by outward appearances, just another well-adjusted, well-to-do professional, enjoying the fruits of his practice, which has afforded his family

one wife, three kids, one Griffeythe benefits of the same upper-middle-class life he himself enjoyed growing up, just north of his current location, in leafy Westchester County. But Kassalows vision extends far beyond New York. In 1958, contact lenses were a relative novelty. People snickered when Theodore Kassalow and his partner opened an optometric practice in Manhattan limited to contact lens care. But the snickering quickly stopped as the lenses became more sophisticated, and demand for them grew. The elder Kassalow built a very successful practice (now 81, hes enjoying retirement, like many good Jews, from a seaside perch in Sarasota, Florida). When Jordan graduated from the New England College of Optometry in 1988, he joined the family business. But with a stipulation. He was only prepared to devote half his time to the practice, which would serve as an economic base to do other things. The half-time rule, incidentally, was one he would maintain throughout his professional life, and it continues to apply at his current practice, where hes now in partnership with Drs. Farkas and Resnick. Even with that stipulation, before coming on board with his father, Kassalow spent six months in India, working at the renowned Aravind Eye Hospital in Madurai. Aravind was created by Dr. G. Venkataswamy (known to all as Dr. V.), who began a for-profit optometric practice that charged market rates to those who could afford to pay, with the profits subsi-

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dizing the provision of free quality eye care to the needy. Aravind began as an 11-bed hospital; it is now one of the largest eye care facilities in the world. Kassalow was inspired by Dr. V.s cross-subsidization model for social enterprise. But he was also rattled by what he perceived to be an enormous market failure: namely, the difficulty of getting quality eye care and glasses to those who can least afford to do withoutnot just in India, but in Latin America, too, where, during optometry college, he had participated in medical missions, and where he saw the problems with sporadic care based on donated supplies. What happens when the medical missionaries have left and the glasses break or the prescriptions cease being effective? These glasses do more than merely enable their wearers to enjoy the local flora: They allow them to work, and to continue working, at a socioeconomic strata where every dollar (or rupee or quetzal) means life-preserving food, clothes, and rent, often for a host of dependents, and particularly for workers in the textile industry, where to get a joband to keep itone needs to see the fine points of ones handiwork. In many cases, being able to seeand see wellis the difference between a livelihood and destitution. Often all it takes is a cheap pair of glasses, and yet all too oftenas Kassalow learnedthat simple remedy is beyond the reach of those who need it most. After Aravind, he got a masters degree in public health from Johns Hopkins and promptly joined Helen Keller International, wherewhile servicing his part-time private practicehe worked for about seven years as director of the division charged with combating Robles disease, a parasitic infection spread by black flies near fast-flowing streams and rivers that causes blindness, and that is particularly pernicious in sub-Saharan Africa and parts of Latin America. Although his heart was in the fieldworkhanding out vital doxycycline tablets to rural patientsKassalow found himself spending an increasing amount of time sitting around policy tables with civic and government leaders, and officials from large NGOs like the World Bank and the World Health Organization. But they were all health people and it began to dawn on him that there were limits to what could be achieved if policy discussions were restricted to that community, well intentioned as its constituents might be. I became convinced that if health people kept talking to health people, we werent going to get anywhere, he relates, in part because health people seemed to have the least amount of political power in governmental structures. It was imperative to get the ears of presidents and prime ministers, foreign and finance ministers, because that was where the powerand the moneylay. Kassalow realized he had to figure out ways to insinuate health into their agenda, and for them to understand why health mattered. There were, he saw, two avenues to make this happen: national security and economic development. If world leaders could be made to see why health impacted these two spheres, people might sit up and take note, and devote the necessary resources

Huge numbers of people were falling out of the workforce, were falling out of school, were not living up to their full potential because they lacked

a simple product that I knew I could get to them affordably.

to addressing crucial health issues. In 1998, Kassalow was discussing his frustrations with one of his part-time private practice patients, who just happened to be Madeleine Albright, the then U.S. ambassador to the United Nations (and subsequently the secretary of state). Albright put him in touch with Leslie Gelb, who, at the time, was president of the Council on Foreign Relations, one of the nations preeminent foreign policy think tanks and publisher of the influential journal Foreign Affairs. Kassalow pitched Gelb on the idea that health would be increasingly important in foreign affairs and that it was in the interests of the U.S. foreign policy apparatus to understand this link. Gelb said, Interesting, but can you prove it? Kassalow said, Hire me and I will. A few months later, thats exactly what Gelb did, and Kassalow spent five years at the council as an adjunct senior fellow, writing papers and meeting with global influencers, in an effort to advance his ideas. Around the same timebecause the man evidently likes to keep busyhe set up a business, Scojo LLC, with a colleague, Scott Berrie. Scojo had two components: a limited liability, for-profit corporation, and a related nonprofit foundation aimed at the notion that, broadly stated was, If you cant see, you cant work. Scojo LLC addressed a gap in the market for affordable reading glasses. At the time, eye care patients had basically two options: over-thecounter pharmacy glasses for $10 that made them look like their grandmother and didnt

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have great optical quality, or if they went to the optical store, theyd have to spend one, two, three hundred dollars. The LLC aimed at a mid-price point, and was able to develop a line of reading glasses that retailed for around $50, and that were more stylish and of better quality than the ones at Duane Reade or Walgreens. Instead of selling to every CVS, they would sell to places like Saks, Bergdorf Goodman, Neiman Marcus, Bloomingdales, and higher-end pharmacies. But the deal was that 5 percent of the profits would go to the Scojo Foundation. This was Kassalows opportunity to implement the cross-subsidization model hed learned from Dr. V. The LLC was sold in 2007 (Berrie has transitioned into film production), but the foundation would become VisionSpring, which Kassalow still leads, as co-chair alongside CEO Kevin Hassey. Kassalow saw that huge numbers of people were falling out of the workforce, were falling out of school, were not living up to their full potential because they lacked a simple product that I knew I could get to them affordably. Figuring out how to implement the vision, how to solve the problem, took time and iterations. Its hard enough to set up an enterprise in established fields. But when youre trying to address a long-standing market failure, when youre creating the road map at the same time as youre developing the business, mistakes are inevitable. With hindsight (something none of his current spectacles offer), he says that an early error was not failing fast enough. In the early days, we tried too hard to

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make what we thought would work, work. The chances are, whatever your first idea is, it wont be the one youre taking to the bank. VisionSpring eventually found its footing and, one dares say, it now has a distinct spring in its step. It distributes stylish, prescription eyeglasses to the worlds poornot recycled, secondhand frames with imprecise lenses, but brand-new specs in (relatively) fashion-forward designs. Hundreds of thousands benefit each year, chiefly, at least for now, in Latin America, India, and Bangladesh. A couple of key insights informed the shape the business has taken. First, no matter how poor, no matter how much people might benefit from proper glasses, style matters. Kassalow has written about an experience with a woman, almost blind, in Choc, Colombia, who had traveled a days journey, by canoe, to access the team of visiting eye doctors. They were fortunate enough to locate for her a pair of donated glasses that were close to the prescription she required. Her vision restored, she paddled off, back to her vil-

lage. But two days later, she returned. The glasses1950s-style cat-eye frameshad provoked ridicule. Told that the team had no other glasses to offer, she politely thanked them, returned the offending pair, and left, her vision as useless as before. A second principle undergirding the VisionSpring operation is acknowledging that the recycling model is grossly inefficient when it comes to eyewear. A recent study found that only 7 percent of recycled spectacles were suitable for use, and the cost of delivering them far exceeded the cost of supplying new ones. Finally, although VisionSpring still relies in no small measure on philanthropy, it operates not as a charity but as a social enterprise, which, in Kassalows definition, means applying business principles, discipline, and practices to solving social problems. VisionSprings long-term goal is to create economically viable businesses that can scale to the marketplace. Across the organization, this year, 50 percent of our budget will be covered by sales revenue and 50 percent by philanthropy. Three years ago, the split was 9010. So theres progress on that front, as well as in terms of the other aspect of social entrepreneurship that Kassalow emphasizesscalability. Just this year, we have our first profitable business, in El Salvador, he says. Our revenue will cover all the operating costs. As a result, our board has approved a major scaling of that effort, about eightfold, in the years to come into Honduras, Nicaragua, and Guatemala. The enterprise is modeled on what it terms a hub-and-spoke structure, where the hub is a local optical shop and the spokes are vision entrepreneurs. The VEs are low-income entrepreneurs, trained to conduct basic eye exams in the field, who embark on vision campaigns to medically underserviced areas of the countryside, providing education and selling low-cost, fashionable eyewear and related optical products. Where necessary, referrals are made to the local optician (the hub). To date, over a million glasses have been delivered as a result of VisionSprings efforts. If one wanted to translate that number

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into something more tangible, one could do worse than to hear Kassalow describe a medical volunteer mission to Mexico, many years ago, as a student. On the first day of the trip, we arrived at our site to find 2,000 people in line waiting to have their eyes checked. One of those in line was a 7-year-old boy who was carrying a Braille book. The boys family explained that he was blind, but as I started to examine his eyes, I soon realized that the boy was just extremely myopic. His prescription was a -20.00D and, incredibly, we were able to fit him with a pair of donated glasses with a -19 prescription. As I placed the glasses on the boys nose, I watched as the blank stare of a blind person transformed into an expression of unadulterated joy. I was witnessing someone seeing his world for the first time. I provided this boy with sight, and he provided me with a keen sense of purpose. I decided then and there that if I could replicate that moment a thousand times over, I would have led a meaningful life.

I provided this boy with sight, and he provided me with a keen sense of purpose.

Hes done it, and not just a thousand times over, but a thousand thousand. One million glasses in over little more than 10 years. No laurel rester, hes aiming for 10 million more in the decade to come. Kassalow doesnt need glasses. He calls it presbyopic karma. Asked if he ever wears them just to look smarter, he says no, but he knows plenty of people who do. He cites as an example someone who was a director at VisionSpring for five years, Neil Blumenthal, who would go on to found online eyewear retailer Warby Parker. Its not an idle plug for an old associate; Warby Parker is VisionSprings oneto-one partner. For every pair of Warby Parkers sold, the company funds or provides a new pair for VisionSprings distribution. Can you fake your way through an eye exam? If it was in my office, yes, because I know the letters by heart. Not every doctor has the same letters in the same sequence. Asked for a good optometrist joke, he doesnt have anything exactly on point but offers an optically-themed one whose specifics arent quite fit for print. It involves a man who accidentally swallows his glass eye, and a subsequent visit to the proctologist. The punch line: What, you dont trust me?

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