A Message from Tony Bavuso, CEO

As I look back on the great work that Saving Sight did in 2020, I can’t help but pause in appreciation of all of the people who came together during the most difficult times of our lives to help others in need. While 2020 was a surprising and challenging year, I suppose it shouldn’t surprise me how our team and partners rose to meet challenging times. That is what we do at Saving Sight. We demonstrate resilience, initiative, and innovation in providing care to families and stewarding the gift of restored sight from one individual to another.

Over the past 12 months, our team demonstrated resourcefulness and determination in recovering eye donor tissue for transplant by finding ways to keep stakeholders, including staff, safe and continuing to successfully operate in a healthcare system stressed by the demands of COVID-19. We quickly transitioned to home office environments for staff who could work from home. To protect essential staff who needed to stay to work in the lab, Saving Sight provided PPE and put social distancing measures in place, as carried out by its employee-driven COVID-19 task force.

While many parts of the U.S. and our service area were still on lockdown, Saving Sight staff traveled to hospitals to recover eye tissue from deceased donors for transplant. Before and after tissue donation, our team took additional steps to screen for COVID-19 and other infectious diseases regularly included in the screening process. Finally, after donor tissue was prepared for transplant in our lab, often our staff would drive to physicians’ offices, sometimes hours away, to deliver that tissue for a sight-restoring transplant.

Just as in any other year, we could not fulfill our mission of changing lives by saving sight without many partners’ help. While COVID-19 taxed our donor hospitals and physician offices, they did not give up the fight of standing side-by-side with Saving Sight to provide the gift of sight to others. On behalf of all of the individuals that Saving Sight served in 2020, thank you for helping us provide the gift of sight to others!

Ultimately, I believe that our response to COVID-19 reflects our focus on building a strong organizational culture rooted in accountable stewardship and resilience. For years, we have put intentional work into fostering a team that values and reflects resilience as part of its mission in serving others in times of difficulty and loss. That experience allowed our team to rise up and meet others’ needs during the most difficult of times.

As we continue our work into 2021, our team has great hope for a bright future where there is healing for our world and our country. We will continue to do our part in providing healing for families suffering from loss, knowing that their loved one can be a hero that has allowed another person to see thanks to their gift of sight. We will continue to provide the utmost care in preparing that gift of sight for transplant to heal recipients. And we will continue to build an organizational culture that values people and their contribution to our mission.