Board of Directors

Jennifer Staple-Clark, Founder and Chief Executive Officer

In 2000, Jennifer Staple-Clark, then a sophomore at Yale University, founded Unite For Sight in her dorm room. Due to Jennifer's leadership and her focus on entrepreneurial innovation, Unite For Sight is a leader both in global health education and in providing cost-effective care to the world's poorest people. A visionary leader and social entrepreneur, she has been featured twice in Nicholas D. Kristof's columns in The New York Times. She was also featured weekly on CNN International in 2007 and 2008.

Jennifer is the recipient of the 2011 John F. Kennedy New Frontier Award, presented by the John F. Kennedy Library Foundation and the Institute of Politics at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government to "an individual whose contributions in the realm of community service, advocacy or grassroots activism have elevated the debate or changed the landscape with respect to a public issue or issues." In 2013, she received the Praxis Award in Professional Ethics from Villanova University. Jennifer also received the American Institute of Public Service's 2009 National Jefferson Award For Public Service, which is regarded as the "Nobel Prize" for public service. In 2007, Jennifer was awarded a BRICK Award, which honors and funds change-makers who identify problems and work to change the world. She has also been featured in the book Our Time is Now: Young People Changing the World, as well as in many other publications.

Jennifer is the author of journal articles and book chapters about social entrepreneurship, best practices in global health, and community eye health. Additionally, she serves as a judge in social entrepreneurship competitions, including the Canadian Government's Grand Challenges in Health. A cum laude graduate of Yale University, Jennifer is also a member of the Yale University President's Council on International Activities.

Jennifer frequently gives presentations and keynote addresses about social entrepreneurship, global health, and international development. Her most recent audiences have included Harvard School of Public Health, Yale Law School, Yale College, Yale School of Public Health, Duke University, Villanova University, University of Virginia, Stanford University, York University, University of Miami School of Medicine, Bascom Palmer Eye Institute, Albert Einstein College of Medicine, New York University School of Medicine, Loyola Marymount University, Loyola University, Lehigh University, MIT, Northwestern University School of Medicine's American Medical Student Association Conference, Brigham Young University's Global Maternal and Child Health Conference, and American Academy of Ophthalmology's Women in Ophthalmology Leadership Institute.

She resides in Connecticut with her husband and their two sons.

Eric J. Bertrand

Eric Bertrand has served on the Boards of OptiCare Health Systems, U.S. Vision, Control F-1 and Versura, Inc. Currently with EJB Capital Management, he holds a Master of Business Administration in Finance and Entrepreneurship with a certificate in the Digital Economy from New York University and a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration from Bryant College.

Yasha Modi

Yasha Modi is an ophthalmologist who holds an MD from Yale University School of Medicine, and he received his Bachelor's Degree from New York University. He completed a residency fellowship at Cleveland Clinic, and he also completed residency at Bascom Palmer Eye Institute in Miami. Yasha became involved with Unite For Sight when he founded a Unite For Sight chapter as an undergraduate in 2004 at New York University. Yasha's interest in ophthalmology began at the LRBT Free Eye Hospital in Korangi, Pakistan, where he spent two of his high school spring breaks as a volunteer observing cataract surgeries and comprehensive eye exams. He also conducted research at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, where he used NMR resolution techniques to elucidate unusual DNA-quadruplex structures in solution. Since then, he has published his findings in the Journal of the American Chemical Society and the Journal of Molecular Biology. He has also pursued research in the Division of Cardiothoracic Surgery in the Department of Surgery/Cell Biology at New York University Medical Center, where he studied the MAP Kinase intracellular pathway in balloon-injured arteries in a dog model.

Julia Nemiroff

Julia Nemiroff is an ophthalmologist, specializing in retina at East Florida Eye Institute in Stuart, Florida. She completed her retina fellowship at USC Department of Ophthalmology, and she completed her ophthalmology residency at the Jules Stein Eye Institute at UCLA. She is a graduate of NYU School of Medicine, as well as a graduate Summa Cum Laude from New York Institute of Technology (NYIT), where she majored in biology. Julia's grandmother is blind due to macular degeneration that went untreated in Russia. Julia's passion and commitment to eliminate preventable blindness led her to found a chapter of Unite For Sight as a senior at NYIT more than a decade ago. Under her leadership in 2006 and 2007, the NYIT chapter was recognized as the 2006-2007 Unite For Sight Chapter of the Year, and Julia was honored as the Unite For Sight Chapter Leader of the Year.

Natasha Rabinowitz

Currently an Internal Medicine Physician at Stanford University, Natasha Rabinowitz holds an MD from University of Washington, MPH in Epidemiology and Biostatistics from the George Washington University School of Public Health and Health Sciences, and a BA in Biology and English from Mount Holyoke College. Before joining the Board of Directors, Natasha served as a Global Health Leadership Intern at Unite For Sight's headquarters in New Haven and as a volunteer for many years at Unite For Sight's annual Global Health & Innovation Conference. From working in translational clinical research in emergency medicine to consulting on women’s health and development programs, she has a passion for health care in underserved populations and eliminating barriers to health.  She served on the Board of Education Transforming Community Health (ETCH) at University of Washington and previously worked as a Management Strategies in Public Health Teaching Instructor with MPH students at University of Washington and as a Clinical Research Coordinator in the Department of Neurobiology at UCSF.