Dr. Jeffrey Rutgard

Dr. Jeffrey Rutgard is an ophthalmologist who founded iSight Missions, a nonprofit charity that provides sustainable, affordable eye care and vision-restoring surgeries to impoverished persons worldwide. He serves as President and Medical Director of the Hawaiian Eye Foundation, and has held roles as a surgical instructor and surgeon for multiple international humanitarian organizations. Dr. Rutgard is an Adjunct Assistant Clinical Professor at Loma Linda University.

Dr. Rutgard earned his medical degree from the University of Illinois and completed his ophthalmology residency and an associateship at the University of Iowa. He has dedicated over two decades to full-time humanitarian ophthalmology, having participated in more than 300 eye mission projects and performed over 100,000 humanitarian eye examinations. He is responsible for over 25,000 vision-restoring surgeries and has trained over 1,250 ophthalmologists in Manual Small Incision Cataract Surgery.

His work focuses on reversing curable blindness and providing the gift of sight to the blind poor in developing countries. Dr. Rutgard has received numerous awards for his humanitarian contributions, including the Eye Surgical Volunteer of the Decade Award, the Paul Harris Rotary International Award, and the Thornton Humanitarian Award.