What do cataracts and cloudy headlights have in common?

I'm a first-generation immigrant and a first-generation college student. I grew up in Utah, where my mother has spent her career as an ophthalmology technician at the Moran Eye Center — which meant I grew up learning about eyes at the dinner table long before I understood what any of it meant.

I completed my bachelor's degree in Health, Society & Policy in 2020, with a minor in Chemistry. From there, I went to work in Moran's clinical centers — and almost immediately started volunteering with the Global Outreach Division, the same program my mother had spent her career supporting. Over four years of volunteering, that work took me to Navajo Nation reservations, local free clinics, and international vision brigades as far as Tanzania — seeing, over and over, how much difference a short, well-run surgery can make in someone's entire life.

"A short, well-run surgery can change someone's entire life. I wanted a business that made that same idea impossible to ignore."

Alongside that volunteer work, I built a career in clinical research at the Steele Center for Translational Medicine, studying the genetics of age-related macular degeneration. That work became my master's degree — independent research using novel imaging techniques to identify genetic disease patterns in AMD.

Today, I'm a proud University of Arizona student in a post-baccalaureate program, working toward medical school and a long-term goal of becoming a physician. Headlights for Eyesight exists because I didn't want to wait for a white coat to start giving back. Every headlight we restore, in the meantime, helps fund the kind of sight-restoring care I've spent years watching change lives — in Tucson, in Utah, and beyond.