CooperVision is intensifying efforts in myopia and cornea disease management, promoting Jennifer Lambert from Senior Director, Global Myopia Management to Vice President, Myopia Management and Cornea Care and charging her with a broadened remit.

Ms Lambert has already proven her expertise, having played a pivotal role in establishing CooperVision as a leader in myopia management, particularly through the global expansion of the company’s flagship product, MiSight 1 day.

Announcing the appointment, CooperVision said Ms Lambert had an extensive career across consumer sectors, including beverage, home care, and recreational products. Before joining CooperVision, she spent 10 years at Pepsi and worked for Bausch and Lomb in lens care.

“I’ve been lucky in that I’ve had a chance to work on some really iconic brands and companies before I came back to vision care with CooperVision,” Ms Lambert told mivision.

When asked what drew her to eye health specifically, she said the common thread throughout her career has been working with products that positively impact people’s lives.

“I luckily always had perfect vision. I didn’t have kids with myopia, I didn’t have myopia myself. But when I became aware of this product category within CooperVision, and I learned about the opportunity to really do something that could meaningfully change the lives of children, I just got really excited about it.”

ACHIEVEMENTS AS SENIOR DIRECTOR

During her four-year tenure as Senior Director, Ms Lambert spearheaded significant global expansion of MiSight 1 day across Latin America, China, Korea, and Taiwan. She also oversaw the launch of an expanded contact lens parameter range to provide solutions for more children.

A major focus of her work has been establishing crucial industry collaborations, including a partnership with the World Council of Optometry that helped launch its myopia initiative. This collaboration has now secured more than 50,000 eye care professionals worldwide who have signed a pledge to adopt myopia management as a standard of care.

Ms Lambert also supported partnerships with the American Optometric Association to launch the Myopia Collective in the US, collaborated with the International Myopia Institute, and worked with paediatric ophthalmologists through the World Society of Paediatric Ophthalmology to increase understanding of myopia management.

With CooperVision as a founding member of the Global Myopia Awareness Committee, she recently completed a term serving on the board of directors, helping to reframe the organisation’s impact strategy and attract new members, including the Australian Optometric Association. She is succeeded on the board by her colleague, Dr Elizabeth Lumb.

EXPANDED RESPONSIBILITIES

In her new vice-presidential role, Ms Lambert’s portfolio has expanded. As well as overseeing solutions for myopic children, she is responsible for patients with more specialised vision care needs such as keratoconus, irregular cornea, and severe dry eye.

“I’m able to focus more on all commercial aspects as well as R&D… the aim being to provide children with the clear vision that they need and deserve, and really help support CooperVision’s goal of providing lenses for every patient,” she added.

FUTURE CHALLENGES AND INITIATIVES

Despite significant progress in myopia awareness, Ms Lambert acknowledges that challenges remain, particularly in education and adoption among eye care professionals and parents.

“The fact we have solutions now that can help these children, and so many of them are still being offered only vision correction as opposed to the chance to control their myopia,” she noted as one of the greatest challenges.

To address these gaps, CooperVision is intensifying efforts to provide eye care practitioners with tools, training, and scripts to facilitate conversations with parents. The company is also working to shift understanding of myopia as a progressive disease rather than merely an inconvenience.

“At the end of the day, myopia is the abnormal growth of a child’s eye. So it is a progressive and chronic disease that only gets worse,” Ms Lambert explained. “As more ECPs understand that it’s not just an inconvenience or a vision correction situation, I think more and more of them are understanding the need and the urgency to act now as opposed to waiting.”

Looking ahead, CooperVision is developing market-specific programmes tailored to different levels of myopia awareness globally. The company is also collaborating with governments to highlight the economic benefits of myopia control and has endowed a PhD to analyse the economic value of myopia treatment versus the impacts of untreated myopia, with initial findings expected next year.

Ms Lambert said the company has already seen exponential growth in myopia management adoption, with hundreds of thousands of children worldwide now wearing CooperVision myopia control products..

“I am just really grateful to be in this role and to have the chance to expand my remit both on the myopia front as well as the cornea care front,” she observed. “My new role is a perfect marriage of a business challenge as well as the opportunity to do good in the world.”