Sparking Change: Inside OCI's Women Leadership Program for Optometry

How 27 women optometrists across India and Nepal spent six months building leadership skills, six community eye health projects and a friendship network that's outlasting the program itself.

Twenty-seven women. Six months. Two countries. One WhatsApp group that's still buzzing! That's the short version of OCI SPARK Women Leadership Program (WLP) 3.0, which wrapped up in Kolkata this August with a convocation ceremony.

Who Showed Up

The cohort was a genuinely mixed bag. Fourteen were optometry educators, seven worked in clinical practice, five came from NGOs, three from the corporate world, five ran their own private practices, five were doing research, and three were postgrad students, and a fair number of them wore two or three of those hats at once. Some had over 15 years in the field; others were just five years in. Most came from Tamil Nadu, but the group also pulled in women from other states like Karnataka, Maharashtra, Uttar Pradesh, Gujarat, Delhi, Goa, Himachal Pradesh, West Bengal and Haryana, plus two participants who flew in all the way from Kathmandu, Nepal.

Dr. Uma, the One-on-One Coach

Most of the program ran as group sessions, but Dr. Uma Narayanan also coached every single participant one-on-one. That's not a small thing when you're dealing with 27 women. It meant each of them got real, individual time to work through whatever leadership issue was actually bothering them, not a generic version of it.

You can tell it landed. One participant wrote afterward: "A massive thank you to our phenomenal mentor, Dr. Uma, who tuned us so beautifully, took powerful sessions, and truly brought out the absolute best in all of us."

The Speaker Lineup

Around Dr. Uma's coaching, OCI brought in a genuinely impressive set of guest speakers: Ms. Lalitha Raghuram from Mohan Foundation, Dr. Byki Huntjens (President of BCLA), Dr. Carolina Kunnen from The Optical Foundation in Ghana, surgeon and academic Dr. V. Sridevi, Ukti Vora of Nerdy Optometrist, Ms Isha Dave of ASIRA, and leadership coach Ms Rashoo Sachdeva. Each one took a different module and brought their own story to it.

Making Sure No One Got Left Behind

One thing worth calling out: not everyone in the group was equally comfortable with English, and instead of letting that quietly become a problem, OCI got ahead of it. Fellow participants and alumni volunteered as informal language support for anyone who was struggling to keep up. It's the kind of practical fix that doesn't show up in a brochure but makes a real difference to whether someone actually gets the full experience or just half of it.

Six Projects, One Shared Goal

The clearest evidence of what this program actually produced is the action projects. Split into six teams, participants built real interventions tied to the WHO SPEC 2030 goals around spectacle access: Sight Champion Circle, positioning women optometrists as community eye health champions; Nayantara, focused on occupational eye safety for informal women workers; Drishti Sakthi, folding eye health into existing women's health programs; Netra Warriors, working on spectacle compliance among women beneficiaries; Digital Rejuvenation, a women-led digital eye health awareness campaign; and a sixth project building evidence and documenting the impact of women-led eye care work.

One participant, reflecting on the experience, put it well: "What truly stood out was bringing together 27 amazing women and creating such a powerful space for connection, learning, and inspiration... women empowering women, coming together, lifting each other up."

Alumni Still in the Mix

This wasn't a closed loop either. Past SPARK participants stayed involved, moderating panels like "Sparking Dialogues," running financial literacy and wellness sessions, mentoring the current batch's action projects, and taking the program's ideas back into their own communities through school screenings and myopia-awareness work. There was even a webinar with Dr. G. N. Rao, founder of LVPEI, where the current cohort got to put their own questions directly to him.

Three Days in Kolkata

The program closed out with three days at Sankara Nethralaya, Kolkata and the Pipal Tree Hotel: more sessions with Dr. Uma, final project presentations, and a panel discussion on community eye health with Kathleen Sherwin (CEO, Orbis International), Sampa Paul (Sightsavers India), Dr. Prema Chande (OCI Director), and Dr. Anuradha Narayanan (Principal, Elite School of Optometry). Representatives from Titan, Lawrence & Mayo, Vidyasagar Institute of Optometry, and GKB Optical showed up too, to watch the cohort graduate and send them off.

What Stuck

The numbers and the project list tell you what the program did. The messages participants sent afterward tell you what it actually felt like. One participant wrote: "I came to learn about leadership, but I'm leaving with so much more... What began as an online leadership programme became a community of women and friendships I hope will last a lifetime." And another, simply: "Leaving Kolkata with memories of three of the most beautiful days of my life." That's really the story here: not just six community projects, but a group of 27 women who walked in as strangers on a video call and walked out as something closer to family.