Monty Montoya and Shigeru Kinoshita

Monty Montoya is CEO of SightLife Surgical, and the former CEO of its nonprofit parent company SightLife. He joined SightLife in 1997, and has since been dedicated to transforming the cornea ecosystem by driving innovations in research, products, prevention and policy. He has been honored with prestigious awards for his vision and service, including the Ernst & Young 2014 Entrepreneur of the Year Award in the Pacific Northwest Life Sciences category and the Eye Bank Association of America’s coveted Heise Award, which is given to a non-medical individual who has made the greatest contribution to advancing the cause of eye banking.

Shigeru Kinoshita established, along with Richard Thoft, the concept of centripetal movement of corneal epithelium. This shed new light on the importance of the limbal epithelium and contributed to the development of corneal stem cell theory. Over the last 30 years, his primary interests have been focused on the research and development of new therapeutic modalities for the cornea. To this end, Kinoshita’s group has established systems to transplant cultivated mucosal epithelial stem cells and cultivated corneal endothelium.