President:
Jay Reddy
Foundation President Jay Reddy's dream is a world in which everyone has equal access to education, whatever their social or economic status. He believes that the Foundation's goal of eliminating preventable blindness is a giant step in that direction. He calls education a “great equalizer,” especially for underprivileged children, who stand the most to lose from vision problems.
Foundation President Jay Reddy, left, and Founder/
Medical Director, V.K. Raju, Right, exchange comments
at the 2009 Eye Foundation of America Fundraiser.
Reddy is founder and former CEO of ProLogic, Inc., a company that delivers technology solutions to the US government. He oversaw the business as it grew from one person to over 300 people in 2008, and led the company through a merger year. He is now its Chairman.
Reddy was born in Southern India and came to the US after graduating from the Institute of Bangalore with a degree in Computer Science. He went on to earn a Masters Degree from Virginia Tech and an MBA from West Virginia University. He has been active in the Foundation for nearly a decade and is involved with other nonprofits that promote equal access to education for the world's children. (Read more about the Foundation's work with children on our Childhood Blindness page.)
Founder and Medical Director:
V.K. Raju, M.D.
On many levels, V.K. Raju, M.D's life is one of vision. The West Virginia-based ophthalmologist envisioned the Eye Foundation of America in 1979 after volunteering his spare time to conduct eye camps and provide free eye care for years in his native India. He created the Foundation to extend the work's scope and to partner with other organizations who shared the same goals, maximizing its capabilities many times over. (Read more about the Foundation's development on the History page.)
Raju also helped found the Goutami Eye Institute in 2006, a fully-equipped eye hospital in Rajahmundry, India, with a wing dedicated to children's eye problems. The Institute, also a teaching hospital, has trained 200 opththalmologists, served 400,000 patients, and performed 50,000 surgeries in the short time it has been in operation. (Read more about the Institute on our Hospitals page.
A native of Rajahmundry, India, Raju was educated in India, Great Britain, and the US. He has a large private practice in Morgantown, West Virginia. He also is an adjunct clinical professor of ophthalmology at West Virginia University's School of Medicine. He spends his “spare” time teaching and performing surgery and medical services on a volunteer basis for the Eye Foundation of America.
