By Stephanie Sengwe
Friday, May 10, 2019 1:27 PM
Haris Mirza is a first-generation Pakistani-American who is a second-year optometry student at the
Western University of Health Sciences. Born and raised in California, Mirza’s love for the field has been growing over the years and was only fueled during his undergraduate studies when he took cognitive psychology and philosophy classes and started to view our ability to see differently.
By Stephanie Sengwe
Friday, April 12, 2019 2:04 PM
Sydney Madrigal is a third-year student pursuing her Master’s degree in Public Health as well as her doctorate in optometry at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. Though she spent most of her life in South Florida, Madrigal is of Cuban decent and has created
Latina Optometrist, a light-hearted and inspirational page that gives a voice to one of the minority groups in the optical industry. “Upon starting school in Birmingham, I knew I would be a minority in my class, but over time I realized I was also a minority in the field,” Madrigal explained. “My parents didn’t know much about applying to optometry school, I was pretty much on my own; this is what made me really start to think about the potential impact I could make.”
By Stephanie Sengwe
Friday, April 5, 2019 2:28 PM
Stephanie Doherty is a London-based optometrist whose main focus is special effects contact lenses. Doherty graduated from Cardiff University Wales in the summer of 2013, and went on to complete her pre-registration year, which in the U.K., means you work under a practicing optometrist for one year before taking the Objective Structured Clinical Examination (OSCE) and registering with the college of optometrists.
By Stephanie Sengwe
Friday, March 22, 2019 3:09 PM
The team here at
VM kicked off the week with our annual
Vision Monday Global Leadership Summit which took place at the Times Center this past Wednesday. This year’s program, titled "Decoding the Consumer: The New Science of Customer Behavior," focused on consumer trends and behavior. Those in attendance were presented with trends and tactics that are shaping business decision-making from top retail analysts, health care experts, data scientists and marketing innovators.
By Stephanie Sengwe
Friday, March 15, 2019 11:39 AM
Lili Liang is a spunky, Taiwan-born optometrist who now resides in Vancouver. After moving to Canada at 13, Liang continued her education in the Great White North until she moved to Montreal to attend university. She later came to the U.S. and attended Salus University—Pennsylvania College of Optometry, where she graduated with a dual degree as a Doctor of Optometry and Master of Public Health in 2016. Post-graduation, she took it back home and started working at
Durant Sessions, which was a boutique optical store and she was brought into the optometry practice that same year.
By Stephanie Sengwe
Friday, January 11, 2019 12:17 PM
Sight Humour is a carefully curated Instagram page that offers lighthearted, witty and surely relatable optometry-themed memes for anyone who deals with the eye. A brain child of Husain Patanwala, Sight Humour is only three months old, but has already managed to gain over 1,000 followers. Patanwala, who is a consulting optometrist at the
Asian Eye Hospital and Laser Institute in Pune, India created the page with the hope of bringing some laughter and trivial material to an otherwise very serious and sometimes intense profession. “My friends always commented that I have a quirky and weird sense of humor and I would usually crack up in serious situations. It came quite easily to me that I should start a funny page about something I know so much about,” Patanwala explained.
By Stephanie Sengwe
Friday, December 21, 2018 2:29 PM
Arra Apikian is a second-year optometry student attending the
Western University of Health Sciences College of Optometry in Pomona, Calif. Though he is of Armenian heritage, he was born and raised in Iraq and moved to the U.S. when he was 17-years-old. Growing up, Apikian says, he was an active and energetic kid whose father taught him the importance of agood work ethic and taking pride in workmanship. Though his hometown often didn’t have electricity and he had to study by candlelight, his tenacity to pursue a higher education motivated him and eventually led him to optometry school.
By Staff
Monday, November 12, 2018 12:30 AM
Ashley O’Dwyer has been a practicing optometrist for just over a year and she has hit the ground running. In February of this year, she created thedryeyeguru.com in an effort to educate patients about different causes and treatments of dry eye disease. “I started realizing a majority of my female patients had dry eye disease, and it had never been addressed before,” Dwyer told VMail Weekend.
By Stephanie Sengwe, Contributing Editor
Monday, November 12, 2018 12:30 AM
NEW YORK—On Instagram, Organic Optometrist is an airy page, with carefully curated posts whose color schemes mostly feature green, blue and white. Curated by Erika Mabus, OD, Organic Optometrist is not just a page made to please the eye, it was made purposefully to educate its viewers on some of the skincare products in the ever-changing organic product market. Created in January of this year, Organic Optometrist has garnered over 1,000 followers in just 10 months.
By Stephanie Sengwe
Friday, May 11, 2018 11:06 AM
MEMPHIS, Tenn.—
Beaut Optician is a lifestyle and fashion blog created in August 2017 by Erika McChesney, an optician at
Eye Society located here. While her husband was in optometry school at Southern College of Optometry, McChesney, decided it was time to create a platform where she could share her obsession of fabulous eyewear with others. In August of 2017, McChesney launched Beaut Optician with, “Eye Squinting and Wrinkles,” a post about how to minimize the appearance of wrinkles as we age.