Kovin Naidoo is the Global Head of Advocacy and Partnerships at the OneSight EssilorLuxottica Foundation and the former CEO of the Brien Holden Vision Institute. He is an optometrist, academic, former anti-apartheid activist and political prisoner and an internationally celebrated public health leader.

Kovin Naidoo is the Global Head of Advocacy and Partnerships at the OneSight EssilorLuxottica Foundation and the former CEO of the Brien Holden Vision Institute. He is an optometrist, academic, former anti-apartheid activist and political prisoner and an internationally celebrated public health leader.

Professor Naidoo is Honorary Professor of Optometry at the University of KwaZulu-Natal (UKZN), and Adjunct Professor at University of New South Wales, Australia as well as a Visiting Professor at Wenzhou Medical School. He has published extensively in epidemiology and public health. Prof. Naidoo served on the 2019 WHO World Report on Vision editorial committee and WHO eMyopia group.

Inaugural Chair of the International Myopia Institute(IMI), co-founder of the Global Myopia Awareness Coalition, Global Ophthalmic Institute and the Global Optometry Public Health Alliance and One School at A Time Program. Prof Naidoo is a Fulbright Scholar, an Ashoka Fellow and a Schwab Fellow. He was jointly awarded with Professor Brien Holden, the Schwab Social Entrepreneur Award for Africa 2010 at the regional World Economic Forum.

He was African Optometrist of the Year in 2002, then International Optometrist of the Year in 2007. He received the Prevention of Blindness (POB) Shield Lecture award from the Saudi Ophthalmology Society and an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters by the State University of New York (SUNY).