John Rafferty is more than familiar with AMD. CNIB's new President and CEO says that AMD is common in his family.

Rafferty, now 43, was a teenager when he first learned about AMD – from personal experience. He spent a year living with his grandmother, who had just begun losing her sight from the condition and was receiving rehabilitation services from RNIB (the Royal National Institute of Blind People), an organization that serves people with vision loss in the United Kingdom.

“She had already started using the bright lighting, magnifying glasses, large-buttoned telephones and the big-lettered Scrabble that I played with her,” Rafferty recalls. “The community support, the visits to her home, the two-a-week audio books that she received from the library – those were all critical. After she was diagnosed, she continued to live in her own home for 25 years until she passed away at the age of 98 a few years ago.”

Today, Rafferty says AMD and glaucoma are prevalent on both sides of his family, and he knows he himself is at risk. “I’ve got all the warning signs for AMD,” he says. “For example, the thin retinal wall and the genetic profile. My grandmother’s AMD meant that our family became aware of our risk a lot earlier in our lives than most people do.”

Extensive orientation

Rafferty replaced retiring CNIB president and CEO Jim Sanders on March 2, 2009. Prior to joining CNIB, he gained 13 years of national and international experience in senior leadership positions with British Telecom, Verizon Information Services, and Dun and Bradstreet. More recently, he served as chief operating officer of Canpages Inc., an online and print directory company he co-founded in 2006.

Moving to the non-profit sector had been part of Rafferty’s career plan for some time, but when the opportunity came up at CNIB, he knew it was a great way for him to give back. “With my family experience, I felt it was a perfect fit,” he says.

Since he started the position three months ago, he has gone through an extensive orientation process. So far, he has visited numerous CNIB offices across the country from Newfoundland to British Columbia, and he has spoken to “hundreds and hundreds” of CNIB clients, staff and volunteers. “The welcome’s been phenomenal,” he says. “I’m getting a good idea of our strengths and the myriad challenges we face.”

Client focus

For Rafferty, CNIB’s clients are paramount to what he does. By clients he means all Canadians looking to protect their vision health, and, in particular, the hundreds of thousands of Canadians with vision loss – and their family members – who rely on CNIB’s vision support services.

Feedback from CNIB clients is critical, he says. “I am working to create a relationship to make sure that they’re fully involved in our thought process and that they always understand the ‘why’ when we do things.”

“Not everyone will like all of our decisions all of the time, because we’re going to have to prioritize, but that’s okay,” he says. “I want that debate. That’s what we’re here for.”

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