Eye Health Hero: Ming NI

Ms. Ming NI has been with The Fred Hollows Foundation for more than 8 years and dedicates herself to the promotion of good eye health in rural China. She is also the Gender Champion, and, in this role, addresses barriers on achieving equitable eye health for both women and men. In 2019, Ming successfully piloted the new gender analysis tool, and as a result, it has now been rolled out to other Foundation programs globally.

“Over the past eight years in The Fred Hollows Foundation, every time when I saw people suffering from blindness and visual impairment that can be easily prevented or treated, I feel my work is very meaningful and helpful. Through providing capacity building for local eye health staff, we enable qualified services and promote eye health in rural areas of China. I would love to continually serve people in needed in future with my passion and capacity and will commit to explore new and effective approaches to transform people’s life through ending the avoidable blindness and vision impairment in China.”

– Ming NI

Ming’s experience includes developing, implementing, and managing rural eye care projects. Under her leadership, China has launched its first Gender Project in Guangxi Province and as a result, gender equity is now mainstreamed across all projects in China. Ming is a strategic thinker and likes to challenge the status quo; she is relentless in her commitment to gender equity and eye health.

Ming has led the program team to deliver comprehensive rural eye care projects in 10 provinces across China. Her dedication to the underserved villagers has made her highly respected. Ming’s leadership, alongside her five program colleagues, has ensured millions of people have benefited from The Foundation’s program and her efforts have led to the successful establishment of a rural eye care model which has been promoted across China.

Ming has excellent communication and interpersonal skills and she influences people from a diverse range of backgrounds. Ming can problem solve and finds ideas and solutions quickly while also respecting and encouraging team members with different ideas and challenging more traditional thinking. She learns and adapts quickly, including when faced with changing technology and processes.

Ming is a future leader for eye health in China. She makes change happen based on the changing needs and new trends of eye health care required by local communities. During the first phase of the COVID-19 pandemic, Ming demonstrated strong leadership by adapting new program approaches to meet the constantly changing environment. For example, Ming and her team converted regular face-to-face training workshops for frontline health workers into online training courses. This allowed training for local health workers to continue so that primary health care services for local communities were not interrupted. With outstanding commitment, strong experience and youthful leadership style, Ming leads the China team to explore new and effective approaches of transforming lives through ending avoidable blindness and vision impairment in China with a gender equity lens at the forefront of all that she does.