EnVision Summit 2024: Tips to launch a personal IPO journey for women in eye care

Marsha Link, PhD, sat down with Ophthalmology Times to describe her IPO, encouraging women to assess their current leadership journey, strategically plan for advancement, and explore new opportunities for growth and impact in vision care at the EnVision Summit 2024. She shares some highlights here with Group Editorial Director Sheryl Stevenson.

Video Transcript

Editor's note - This transcript has been edited for clarity.

Sheryl Stevenson: We are joined today by Dr. Marsha Link, who is among the presenters at this year's EnVision Summit. Welcome to you! So excited to see you again and to learn more about your talk today. Can you tell us about the title, 'Time to Thrive: Launch your Personal IPO.' Now that sounds really intriguing.

Marsha Link, PhD: Well, thank you. Thanks, Sheryl. It's a pleasure to deliver 'Time to Thrive: Launch your Personal IPO' and this will be at the inaugural leadership session at the EnVision Summit. The intent of this leadership session is to provide a framework for high-achieving women to just increase their impact in vision care wherever they find themselves. And the presentation 'Time to Thrive' is really intended to be an encouraging inspirational challenge to women, to help them and offer some concrete ways that they can expand their leadership journey and their skills and thus their impact.

As you know, in the business world 'IPO' stands for initial public offering, but in 'Time to Thrive' those letters stand for something else.

So a description of this is that the I stands for Imagine. And the imagine is to take inventory of your current situation, the current state where you are in your leadership journey.

The P stands for Prepare, to be intentional about making a plan to move yourself to the next level or the next aspiration in your leadership journey.

And the O stands for Optimize, to optimize not only where you are now with the challenges and opportunities you have, but to consider and experiment with opportunities and leadership that may not even be on your radar at the moment.

So during this presentation, we will look in depth at I-P-O and come up with some very specific concrete suggestions on how leaders may further their skills and their aspirations and thus the impact that they have in vision care.

So I'm really excited about being able to deliver this. My wish is that everyone who attends will really understand that now is the time to thrive, and that they have all the power and ability to launch their own I-P-O so that they can reach their goals and add impact and valuable impact to vision care and to the patients that they serve. So I'm delighted to be a part of this EnVision Summit.

Stevenson: Well, that's fantastic. That sounds very empowering. Is there anything else to add that we haven't touched upon?

Link: I think in this leadership summit...this leadership session that starts the summit....it's on Friday. I think Bonnie Henderson and Malvina Eydelman put together and myself put together an agenda that's going to be very powerful. And before I deliver this message, there will be 10 women who will be sharing very powerful stories about their own experiences as they've created their own leadership journey. So I'm excited. I think it all fits together nicely. And I think that people who are attending this will come away hopefully inspired and very willing to go to the next level of where they want to go with their leadership journey.