About this item
The remarkable and inspiring story of a Columbia undergrad from a poor Jewish family who, after losing his eyesight to disease during his junior year, finds the power to break through the darkness and fulfill his vision for a life of great professional success and distinguished public service.It's a bitterly cold February in 1961, and Sandy Greenberg lies in a hospital bed in Detroit, newly blind. A junior at Columbia University from a Jewish family that struggled to stay above the poverty line, Sandy had just started to see the world open up to him. Now, instead of his plans for a bright future - Harvard Law and politics - Sandy faces a new reality, one defined by a cane or companion dog, menial work, and a cautious path through life. But that's not how this story ends.
About the Author
Sanford D. Greenberg is Chairman of the Board of Governors of The Johns Hopkins University's Wilmer Eye Institute, the largest clinical and research enterprise in ophthalmology in the United States.He is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. He is a Trustee Emeritus of The Johns Hopkins University and Johns Hopkins Medicine, which incorporates the School of Medicine and the Hospital.Dr. Greenberg lost his eyesight to disease during his junior year in college, yet graduated with his class the following year, elected as class president. In 2012 he instituted a campaign and prize for research toward eradicating blindness among humankind: "End Blindness by 2020." This effort gained international recognition in 2014 when it was granted a featured session on the agenda of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, where Dr. Greenberg has been a regular participant.President Clinton appointed him to the National Science Board, which oversees the National Science Foundation and advises both the President and Congress on policy matters related to science and engineering. He served as Chairman of the Rural Health Care Corporation, created by Congress to bring the benefits of telemedicine to America's rural areas. Dr. Greenberg was a founding director of the American Agenda, an organization established by Presidents Carter and Ford to identify for President George H. W. Bush the six most urgent problems confronting the nation and to recommend bipartisan solutions. He also served as a director of the National Committee on United States-China Relations.As a White House Fellow in the Johnson Administration, Dr. Greenberg worked on national technology needs with the United States Departments of Defense, State, and Commerce, and White House task forces on NASA, information systems, and biomedical research. He was co-editor of the book The Presidential Advisory System, which discussed the methods used by American Presidents to obtain policy advice for the management of the federal government.His career as inventor, entrepreneur, and investor began when he invented and patented a compressed speech machine which speeds up the reproduction of words from recordings without distorting any sound. He founded several enterprises, including a company that produced specialized computer simulators and one which created the world's largest electronic laboratory surveillance network and antimicrobial profiling database.Dr. Greenberg received his B.A. as Phi Beta Kappa from Columbia University in 1962. He earned his M.A. and Ph.D. from Harvard University, and his M.B.A. from Columbia University. He was a Marshall Scholar at Oxford University and attended Harvard Law School. He lives in Washington, DC with his wife, Sue; they have three children and four grandchildren.
