Ex-Starbucks Exec Helps Develop Global Eye Banks

Some 10 million people suffer from corneal blindness. It's relatively rare in the U.S., and if you have it, you're likely to have a corneal transplant and your vision will be restored. But in the developing world, where most corneal blindness occurs, it's a different matter.
Now, a Seattle-based nonprofit is applying lessons learned in the coffee business in its efforts to bring sight to as many people as it can.
Tucked away in a downtown Seattle office building is one of the largest eye banks in the world. It's run by an organization called SightLife. It finds organ donors, collects the corneas from the newly deceased and prepares the tissue for surgery.
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What if, he wondered, his organization could help create 900 eye banks around the world to meet the local demand? Just about everyone thought his idea was crazy — except Schottman.
"[He] looked at it and said, 'Ah, only 900 — that's not that hard,'" Montoya says.
Schottman had been part of the global strategy team at Starbucks. "There were times we were putting plans together to open five, six, seven stores in a day," he says. "So to me, 900 over a 10- to 20-year time period seemed very modest in terms of its ambition."