“I didn’t want to go into private practice, I wanted to teach,” Nussbaum said. So his next move was to join the faculty at the Henry Ford Health System in 1982 and build its retina program. Nine years into his tenure, the renowned Dr. Cornelius E. McCole (who recruited Nussbaum) retired as Chair of the Department of Ophthalmology. Bogorad, who was then also on the Henry Ford staff, nudged his friend to apply. “I was 38 at the time and I didn’t think I was prepared for the chairmanship,” Nussbaum recalled. But the advice and support of McCole and his close friend, J. Edward Lundy, the Ford Motor Co. Vice President who endowed the Cornelius E. McCole Chair of Ophthalmology, convinced Nussbaum that he could do the job. “Objectively, I think he did very well,” Bogorad said. “He’s a highly skilled ophthalmologist, teacher and administrator who is also a very nice guy who engenders the respect of people around him with his words and deeds. That’s his ‘secret sauce.’”
Back at MCG After helping create one of the nation’s largest ophthalmology departments and residency training programs at Henry Ford, Nussbaum set his sights on a locale he was already familiar with: Augusta At GHSU, he saw the opportunity to build the vision research program he had longed to create. “We already had outstanding clinicians and vision science faculty in the university,” he said. “It was like finding a hidden gem.” One faculty member, in particular, caught his eye. “I met a smart, beautiful woman with a smile that reveals a heart of gold,” Nussbaum says unabashedly. That woman was Dr. Stephanie Goei, a pediatric ophthalmologist who joined the faculty in 1999. As Nussbaum was coming in as Chair, Goei was leaving for a job in Madison, Wis. For most of the six-month period they worked together, the relationship was strictly collegial. “We got to know each other professionally before any romance cluttered the situation,” said Goei, now Director of Pediatric Ophthalmology
Services. “I thought he was a great guy. I had a sense that he was a truly good person.” When the proverbial sparks flew, Goei changed her mind about leaving. “He made me an offer I couldn’t refuse,” she says jokingly. The couple discussed nuptials, but some administrative wrangling (namely assigning Goei to another academic department) had to occur before matrimony, since Nussbaum, as Chair, was Goei’s supervisor. “With the blessing of the Dean, the legal department and everyone else, we were married in 2002,” Nussbaum says with a smile. The couple – a case study in multiculturalism (he’s a half-Cuban Jew; she’s a Catholic-raised ethnic Chinese from Indonesia) – have two children, Noah, 9, and Mayah, 5. Including Nussbaum’s five children from his previous marriage (now aged 20 to 34), he has a total of 7 children and 10 grandchildren. When not vacationing with the family at Walt Disney World (See At a Glance on Page 31), Nussbaum focuses on building the Vision Discovery Institute through grant funding and philanthropic contributions. During his nine years as Chair at Henry Ford, he raised $8 million in private-sector funds, and at MCG he is known as one of the more philanthropic-minded department heads. “The institute is my dream, and I need to raise funds to sustain that dream,” he said. What Nussbaum won’t say – but his wife will – is that he is more clinically active than the typical department chair, seeing patients on a near daily basis (Castle Connolly has recognized him annually as one of America’s Top Doctors since 2000). “He probably should not be seeing patients as much as he does, but he really loves it,” Goei said. “As a physician, he really does care about every patient. He knows them as individuals and what is going on in their lives.”
A Different View Unlike many physicians, Nussbaum considers the brain an extension of the eye, instead of the other way around. “A lot of what goes on in the brain is diagnosed through the eye,” he points out. Nussbaum is also quick to point out the importance of generating new knowledge in the vision sciences, as techniques and technologies developed for the eyes are often applicable in other specialties (ultrasound, for example, was used in ophthalmology before obstetrics, and the first use of lasers in medicine was for the eyes). And there’s also the critical issue of the burden that vision loss has on society – nearly two-thirds of the blind are unemployed and the estimated annual cost to the federal government alone exceeds $4 billion. “The two afflictions people fear most are cancer and blindness,” he said. “So when you restore someone’s sight, it’s an extreme blessing.” Science and medicine have made so many vision-saving advances that the public – at least in developed nations – has become more complacent about their eyes compared to, say, their heart
Dr. Julian Nussbaum with wife, Dr. Stephanie Goei
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