{"id":13343,"date":"2025-09-16T14:32:13","date_gmt":"2025-09-16T18:32:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/?p=13343"},"modified":"2025-09-23T11:21:29","modified_gmt":"2025-09-23T15:21:29","slug":"a-true-visionary","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/?p=13343","title":{"rendered":"A true visionary"},"content":{"rendered":"

Tom Ruggia \u201998 is a man of focus. Throughout his life, he\u2019s always had a clear vision of his goals and the steps needed to achieve them. \u201cPreparation is where you win,\u201d he says.<\/span><\/p>\n

It\u2019s a lesson Ruggia initially learned from being an athlete \u2014 first as a <\/span>captain of the TCNJ football team. \u201cYour position is only on the field for <\/span>maybe 30 minutes of each contest, but still you\u2019re practicing 365 days a year, <\/span>two hours a day,\u201d he says. Then he started running marathons and gradually <\/span>added biking and swimming to his repertoire \u2014 eventually becoming an Ironman competitor. To date, he\u2019s competed in six full Ironmans and 12 half-Ironmans. He wakes at 4 a.m. to train for several hours before work. \u201cIt absorbs some of my energy, so I can really be my best,\u201d he says.<\/span><\/p>\n

Ruggia\u2019s penchant for hard work and preparation is perhaps most evident in his role as CEO of Samsara Vision, a Far Hills, New Jersey\u2013based company that makes prosthetic devices to be implanted in patients\u2019 eyes to help improve sight. Samsara\u2019s technologies specifically address <\/span>age-related macular degeneration, a medical condition in which cells in a part of the retina <\/span>called the macula are damaged, causing patients to develop blind spots in their central <\/span>vision. AMD is the leading cause of vision loss in individuals over the age of 65.<\/span><\/p>\n

A desire to improve the lives of patients with special needs stemmed from his own family\u2019s experiences. Ruggia\u2019s younger brother was born with a rare condition called mucopolysaccharide disorder. Given proper care and effective treatment, his brother was able to thrive, and now, at age 45, he remains one of Ruggia\u2019s biggest inspirations. \u201cI always look at what he\u2019s done <\/span>and think I\u2019m still underperforming wherever I\u2019m at,\u201d says Ruggia.<\/span><\/p>\n

The first in his family to go to college, Ruggia was a kinesiology major at TCNJ. He originally intended to pursue physical therapy after college. But a gap-year position in pharmaceutical sales sparked a different interest. The excitement he experienced in the competitive sales environment suited his personality and his drive to achieve. That position led to work in the ophthalmology industry for Alcon and Johnson & Johnson before he assumed the chief executive position at Samsara in 2020.<\/span><\/p>\n

As Samsara\u2019s CEO, Ruggia has spearheaded efforts to get the AMD technology into the hands of doctors and has also secured regulatory approval and insurance coverage in countries all over the world. \u201cThe hardest part of the job is to take a novel technology and make the ophthalmology community aware this is a good option for patients,\u201d he says.<\/span><\/p>\n

Samsara\u2019s procedure surgically inserts a telescope just four millimeters thick into the back of the eye, where it can magnify the image to shrink the blind spot and allow patients to see again. To date, the Samsara devices have restored vision to more than 450 patients worldwide.<\/span><\/p>\n

For several dozen of these patients, Ruggia has been in the operating room to observe. \u201cThe frustration patients feel about losing their vision really impacts their psyche,\u201d he says. \u201cWhen they can start to see again, they cry, and the surgeon cries, and I cry \u2014 it\u2019s amazing.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Photo: Peter Murphy<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Tom Ruggia applies life lessons to his startup
\ncompany that gives eyesight to the blind.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":353,"featured_media":13345,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13343","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-alumni-corner"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13343","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/353"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=13343"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13343\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13400,"href":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13343\/revisions\/13400"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/13345"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=13343"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=13343"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=13343"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}