Mark S. Agnew is the CEO and founder of Eyeglasses.com, a leader in the online consumer eyewear business. Since 1999, Agnew pioneered online retailing by being the first eyewear company with a virtual try-on application, earning two patents which were later sold to Luxottica Corporation.
Agnew has long been a consumer advocate, leaving a successful Wall Street career to develop Eyeglasses.com. The omni-channel retailer sells high-quality eyewear to customers for half of the price normally charged by optical stores. As an expert in the eyewear industry, he authored Eyeglasses Buying Guide: How to Pay Less and Get More. This book offers advice and information to all consumers of eyeglasses, offline and online.
As an outspoken critic of “Vision Insurance Benefits” plans, Mark Agnew appears frequently in the media to expose how these plans are a bad deal for employees. Vision insurance benefits also raise the price of eyewear across the country costing consumers billions of dollars annually in overpayments to providers.
Recently Agnew launched Vision Magazine, an online publication which features researched topics ranging from the eyewear business, to insurance, health tips, and meditation. As the victim of street violence and permanently blinded in one eye, Agnew helps people deal with trauma through writing and public speaking opportunities, and awareness counseling.
Founded on the principal of helping others, Eyeglasses.com continues to evolve its charity program and in 2019 launched PiWear to literally make blind people see again. For every pair of PiWear sold, Eyeglasses.com funds a cataract surgery in India. This effort has earned Agnew wide-ranging media coverage in the press.
Prior to founding Eyeglasses.com, Agnew was Director of Fixed Income Research and Vice President at Lehman Brothers. Before that, he was Managing Director-Principal at Bear Stearns, and started his Wall Street career at Drexel Burnham Lambert. Agnew denies all responsibility for the demise of those three companies. Institutional Investor Magazine recognized Agnew as a top analyst for his investment research, which numbered in the thousands of pages during his ten years on Wall Street.
Agnew earned his MBA at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, and a BA in Art History from Vassar College. He is an active Rotarian, was a board member of the Westport-Weston Chamber of Commerce, donates eyeglasses to the local homeless shelter, and is active in local charities.
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