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Gordon Gund, A Mission to Cure Blindness

Published on25 JAN 2018

At the age of 30, Gordon Gund, a prominent American businessman and philanthropist, became blind due to a genetic disease called retinitis pigmentosa. Since then, Gund and his wife, Lulie, have made it their mission to help find a cure. In this discussion, Gund talks about how he has tried to turn his own struggles into solutions for himself and others. Gund, a former NBA and NHL team owner, also discusses how he has excelled at working with professional athletes over the years, including Cleveland Cavaliers star LeBron James.

Gund on confronting blindness: “If there’s a problem or something that you’re confronting, you try and find solutions and that’s kind of inbred in me... You have to find other kinds of solutions around what you used to be able to do with ease and didn’t even think about, but now you have to think about it. Now you have to find new ways to get information, new ways to communicate, new ways to get from A to B, to do everything that we with sight take for granted.”

Gund on NBA star LeBron James: “He’s an extraordinary human being... Beyond just basketball, he’s a real leader and very philanthropic, very involved with the community he grew up with... and really a tremendous human being.”

 

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