A Man of Industry: Mo Merchea (OD’97, MS’99, PhD’03, MBA)

I grew up in Canada (home of ketchup flavored chips) in, at the time, a small college town called London, Ontario. My family emigrated (first generation) from India, in the belief that they would be able to provide their future family greater opportunities. I’m the oldest of three siblings.  

I knew I wanted to be in health care and my dad is an ophthalmologist, so I was exposed at an early age to the eye and the wonders of caring for people’s vision. I sent my OAT scores to every school near home or where I thought the weather would be way better (California/Florida). Then I started spending time with more ODs in my hometown and got to know OSU’s reputation as one of the great optometric institutions. I was lucky to have been accepted into the OD program, because the alternative would have been going into Dentistry at a school that starts with an M.

I was lucky to have had great mentorship from several faculty members, the most impactful being Joe Barr (OD/MS’77). I remember reaching out to him on a Friday afternoon to ask for a letter of recommendation to get a VA residency. He asked if I’d be interested in doing the fellowship instead. I laughed and politely declined. Over the weekend I did some digging into where the fellowship and experience I would gain working for Joe could lead. The following Monday I told him I wanted to apply. That was the beginning of the next 10+ years of the two us working together.

It was partly a delay tactic to growing up and getting a real job. Fortunately, Joe Barr and Karla Zadnik, OD, PhD, sat down with me over lunch at the Faculty Club to have the PhD talk. What I learned from that discussion was no matter where I went in the world, every employer would understand what a PhD was, and that would open doors that an OD/MS might not. It was at this point that I started to think about academia or industry, and that a PhD might be beneficial.

Having Joe Barr as my post-grad and fellowship advisor led to incredible opportunities to network with optometric leaders and researchers in industry. I met my future boss at a dinner when the Bausch and Lomb (B+L) clinical affairs team was visiting the university. I ended up talking to Ian Cox, B.Optom, PhD, about the complexities of building a wavefront sensor on a breadboard (thanks to Tom Raasch’s, OD, PhD, lab) the entire night. Ian was very kind and patiently listened to me rattle off everything I learned before he told me he was the clinical lead that developed the first commercial wavefront sensor used to drive an excimer laser. That one night led to a meeting at ARVO two years later when I was in the final year of my PhD program, where I got the invitation to interview for a role in Research and Development (R&D) at B+L. 

It was a tough decision. I needed a change. It was the riskiest career decision I’ve ever taken. I left a big corporate job for a very small surgical company with less than 100 employees to try out the startup environment. 

After a fun year experiencing the volatility of a small company, I got a call from Alcon with an offer to join as a Director of Medical Affairs supporting the CL division. I was lucky to join several great Ohio State Optometry alums who were already at Alcon, Rick Weisbarth (OD’80) and Carla Mack (OD’95, MBA).

I am a Vice President for Medical Affairs at Alcon, responsible for global medical strategy for all of Alcon’s product portfolios including Vision Care (CLs), Surgical, and Pharmaceuticals. 

Boredom and the feeling I was being left behind. I was about six years into my career at B+L where I’d had the great fortune of having led R&D programs developing both surgical and contact lens products. I was totally comfortable in that world. However, when it came to working with all the business leaders, they spoke a completely foreign language (ROI, EBITDA, transfer cost, etc.) that left me at a loss. I happened to be visiting Columbus and Carla Mack (at the time clinic chief) was enrolled in the MBA program at Ohio State’s Fisher College of Business. She was telling me about everything she was learning and described situations that sounded familiar to me, but in that vocabulary I just didn’t understand. I spoke with several business leaders I worked with at B+L, and all of them said I didn’t “need” the MBA to succeed, but like the PhD, it opened some doors. It has definitely helped me grow into different roles within industry.

It was spectacular right out of school. I travelled around the world and was exposed to many cultures. That insight has been a great asset to me in my current job. Understanding the differences from market to market in how patient care is provided, and what products are available, are so abstract until you see them in person. Seeing a contact lens self-serve dispenser in Asia was an eye-opening experience!

If you can, add ‘vacation’ after the work part of the trip. Also, always bring an iPad with movies in case your entertainment system goes dead on an international flight!

I love skiing, despite the fact that the most memorable trip was the last one where I blew out my ACL off-piste in Telluride with my best optometric ski buddy, Pete Kollbaum, OD, MS, PhD. We managed to ski down several hundred yards on one leg, until we could get back on a trail and flag down ski patrol. Knee surgery is absolutely miserable. On the positive side, it taught me a valuable lesson about humility, compassion and taking time to understand when people are dealing with health issues that many times aren’t as visible as crutches and a leg brace.

Build a network around what you want to do and where you want to do it and build it before you graduate. Leverage the network of your professors, associates, and friends. It set me on a career path I would not have envisioned when I started optometry school.

The one standout memory is from my PhD qualifying oral examination. My committee was peppering me with questions that I was doing my best to answer. My (now) good friend Mark Bullimore, PhD, took issue with one of my responses and went pretty hard at me. Fortunately, Nick Fogt (OD/MS’92, PhD’96) was also on my committee and he intervened, and in Nick’s way told Mark he was wrong. That spurred a debate that went on for 10 minutes while I sat there nervously looking at Joe Barr. He just smiled and waved at me to let them go at each other. Fortunately, I survived that experience and passed the qualifying exam.

I am in awe of the impact the people I went to Ohio State Optometry or grad school with have had on optometry. I am fortunate to have several classmates that went on to teach, do research and lead institutions, built highly successful practices doing clinical research, or like me, ended up in leadership roles in multinational ophthalmic companies. I’m amazed by all these people and the fact that we all share the experience of coming from Ohio State Optometry.