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NEW YORK--Women’s professional involvement in virtually every segment of the vision care field and optical industry continues to escalate.

And, as several of this year’s Vision Monday honorees observed, the female’s role in the industry can be attributed to forces as varied as eyewear’s ascension to the fashion and brand arenas as well as women’s expansion throughout the healthcare professions, financial services and technology industries. A powerful force, women are increasingly taking on leadership roles throughout local, regional and national companies via research and development, design, marketing, sales, educational institutions and senior management.

In this 6th year of Vision Monday’s highly-anticipated Annual “Most Influential Women” report, we take a new approach. We wanted to widen 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 who guide their companies forward, inspire leadership among their teams and peers and achieve high performance. They are industry influencers who set the tone for their companies and the industry.

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, within their organizations or among others in the industry.

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 that are achieving marked success and reinventing old ideas.

Via networking, coaching as well as education, training and plain old hard work, women are building careers and making contributions throughout every phase of the market and interaction with patients and customers. We hope you enjoy reading their “stories” of success in this challenging and ever-changing world of optical.

We join our readers in saluting them and also want to re-congratulate the several hundred women who have been recognized in our five prior years of reports.
--The Editors