Peggy Achenbach OD ’90 says she would tell young people “If there’s an opportunity, take it. Do it. Just go for it.” The education you’d get from taking a plunge, she said, “is invaluable. Even if it has nothing to do with your own profession, per se.”
She knows better than most how seizing chances can pay off. She has traveled the country and the world as a researcher, educator and entrepreneur. Her current title is executive director global ambassador strategies, ophthalmology and optometry for MJH Life Sciences, a global healthcare consulting and service firm based in Cranbury, N.J.
Achenbach, who lives in Florida, is the firm’s most visible vision care expert, representing such MJH brands as Ophthalmology Times, Modern Retina and Optometry Times.
She enjoyed her experience at Pacific, forming relationships with faculty members, classmates and others that she still maintains today. After graduating, she went to work for Bausch & Lomb, the contact lens conglomerate, then launched her own optometry practice. Then her career veered in a direction she couldn’t have foreseen.
She and two others came across an opportunity to acquire some promising HIV research at no cost. While the possibility had nothing to do with optometry, it appealed to her love of research, and she leapt, becoming cofounder of a biotech company, which she helped run for eight years.
A similar opportunity later turned her into a lecturer. She was living in France, conducting independent research, when she saw the European Academy of Optometry was calling for papers for its impending conference in Amsterdam. She submitted a paper examining the interaction of certain pregnancy medications with ocular treatments, addressing what she described as “a gap in knowledge.” Her paper was accepted, and she began to submit more papers for other occasions, over time becoming well known as a voice for ocular research.
“The world is your oyster,” she tells students and young professionals. “We have so much opportunity.”