John Rafferty was appointed as the chief executive officer of the CNIB in in 2009, which supports Canadians who live with vision loss.
John is the first sighted chief executive officer of the CNIB and has overseen a period of significant change across the organisation over the past decade.
John was in Australia recently and sat down with Stella Glorie in the Talking Vision studio to discuss his time leading the CNIB.
“We’ve just fundamentally changed in the last year. To launch our second century we’ve separated all our healthcare and rehabilitation work into a new organisation called Vision Loss Rehabilitation Canada,” John said.
“It allows us on the CNIB side, as a foundation that raises money from the public, to focus on delivering all of those value-adds. We talk about the things we do in their general categories. We have programs around live, work, play, learn and we’ve got three very broad ambitions,” he said.
John said those three ambitions, increasing workforce participation, unleashing the power of technology and driving achievement and equality are part of CNIB’s overarching goal to “change the landscape and change what it is to be blind.”
You can listen to the rest of John’s discussion, including how CNIB consulted with the wider community on the changes, here or on the player below: