Virginia A. Jacko, President and Chief Executive Officer
As President and CEO of Miami Lighthouse for the Blind and Visually Impaired, Inc., Virginia Jacko is committed to ensuring that blind and visually
impaired adults, low vision seniors, Florida's schoolchildren without resources for eyecare, and Miami's early learners and school-age youth have
equitable access to vision rehabilitation, blindness prevention, and education.
She was a financial executive at Purdue University for 22 years, including 12 years directing financial affairs for the President and Provost.
In her leadership role, she applies her acumen in financial and program development, governmental and donor relations, accreditation, and
compliance arenas in overseeing Miami Lighthouse. Her expertise was enhanced by obtaining a certificate of completion in
"Strategic Perspectives in Nonprofit Management" from the Harvard Business School Executive Education Program.
During her twenty-year tenure as President and CEO at Miami Lighthouse the number of program participants has grown from fewer than 500 in 2004
to more than 28,000 annually in Fiscal Year 2024, and she has grown the organization's assets from $12 million to nearly $72 million. Because of
her grant and contract expertise with public and private funding, Miami Lighthouse, for example, in 2024 had approximately 40 government
contracts and funding from approximately 50 private foundations.
Under her leadership the agency's national Charity Navigator rating moved from 2 to 4 stars, the highest rating possible and has attained 14 consecutive
4-star ratings. A 4-star rating indicates that Miami Lighthouse adheres to sector best practices, exceeds industry standards, and executes its mission
in a financially efficient way. In addition, Miami Lighthouse successfully completed all four of the new Charity Navigator Encompass Beacons, which provide
a comprehensive analysis of performance across four key domains with nearly perfect scores: Accountability and Finance 100%, Leadership and Adaptability
100%, Impact and Measurement 98%, and Culture and Community 100%.
President Jacko founded the Miami Lighthouse Academy, LLC, which includes pre-kindergarten, kindergarten, and grades one through three offered in
collaboration with Miami-Dade Public Schools. The Miami Lighthouse Academy is an Accredited Professional Preschool Learning Environment, which includes the
first fully inclusive early learning prekindergarten for students ages one through four where visually impaired students learn along with their sighted
peers pursuing the same curriculum, the HighScope Curriculum. The Miami Lighthouse prekindergarten program was featured in "Seeing Without Sight, Miami
Lighthouse for the Blind and Visually Impaired Adopts the HighScope Curriculum" in The Active Learner, HighScope's International Journal for Early
Educators, Spring 2019, © Betsy Evans.
Miami Lighthouse's Early Intervention Blind Babies Program was named by The Children's Trust Miami's 2016 Children's Program of the Year, and
The Greater Miami Chamber of Commerce awarded the Miami Lighthouse its coveted 2023 Nonprofit Business Innovative Excellence NOVO Award in
recognition of its services to children especially as a leader in Cortical Visual Impairment.
With a grant from The Children's Trust, teams from the University of Miami research faculty and Miami Lighthouse have conducted collaborative research
on the Miami Lighthouse Academy, LLC inclusion program. The research shows that the inclusion model has demonstrated quantifiable benefits for
students, teachers, and parents. Fifth-year results by researchers at the University of Miami found that the quality of teacher-child interactions
in emotional and behavioral support once again exceeded the national average of the Classroom Assessment Scoring System (CLASS), an industry standard
rating scale. Notably, the emotional support domain for toddlers scored 6.8 out of 7—more than two points above the national average of 4.62 out of 7.
Concerned with the large number of visually impaired adults without a high school diploma (20%), she collaborated with Miami-Dade County Public School to
provide an on-campus adult basic education, GED Program and English as a Second Language instruction enabling visually impaired adults to attend college
and pursue a career.
Recognizing that Cortical Visual Impairment (CVI) is the number one cause of pediatric visual impairment in developed and developing countries and that
unlike ocular vision impairment functional vision in children with CVI is expected to improve with early diagnosis, appropriate assessment, and intervention,
in 2022 with funding from the Health Foundation and The Children's Trust she founded the Miami Lighthouse Cortical Visual Impairment Collaborative Center.
In 2024, a private foundation awarded a two-year $2 million grant, for which she serves as Principal Investigator, with subcontracts to the UM-Bascom
Palmer Eye Institute, Nova Southeastern University and Nicklaus Children's Hospital with the goals of improving diagnosis, assessments, and rehabilitation
of children with CVI.
Most recently, President Jacko launched a comprehensive blind soccer initiative, the first of its kind, for children from age one through high school.
President Jacko is the author of eight peer-reviewed archival journal publications, four of which pertain to best practices for children that the
Miami Lighthouse serves and is co-author of manuscripts currently under review titled, "A Scoping Review on Clinical and Molecular Diagnostic Approaches
for Cerebral Visual Impairment (CVI)," in Survey of Ophthalmology, "The Miami Lighthouse CVI Collaborative Center: A Comprehensive
Multidisciplinary Initiative to Address Cortical Visual Impairment Challenges," and "Learning to Play, Playing to Learn: Peer Interactions and
Executive Functioning in Inclusive Preschool Classrooms Serving Children with Visual Impairment" both manuscripts are pending publication in the
Journal of Visual Impairment and Blindness. She co-authored "Leading and Managing Governance Change,"
Nonprofit World, May/June 2008, and was interviewed for a 2009 article in Nonprofit World entitled, "Building a Rock-Solid Board/CEO Partnership:
Talking with CEO Virginia Jacko." She also has contributed chapters to scholarly books and is an ongoing contributing author to
Exceptional Parent Magazine.
President Jacko was a board officer and accreditation reviewer for the National Accreditation Council for Blind and Low Vision Services, named Distinguished
Alumni by the College of Health and Human Sciences and the HHS Alumni Association, Purdue University, and chosen as one of Purdue's elite "Old Masters."
She has served on boards of foundations and nonprofits like the Girl Scouts, Easter Seals, and the Red Cross. President Jacko was a recipient of the
Henry Viscardi International Achievement Award and served on the Viscardi Global Selection Committee. Locally, she has served on the Miami Foundation
Community Advisory Council, the Miami-Dade County Mayor's Health Equity Special Needs Advisory Committee and has received numerous awards from the Miami
Lions and the Miami and Coral Gables Rotary Clubs.
As a national expert in website and distance learning accessibility for people with vision impairment, President Jacko has been quoted in
The Wall Street Journal,
TIME,
Forbes, and
the Chronicle of Higher Education and featured on NPR. In 2023, she also was featured in
The New York Times
in "Women and Leadership: 7 Women Discuss their Journeys-Virginia Jacko, Accessibility and Education." Her advocacy for accessible digital information in
the workplace, which has resulted in successfully placing clients in mainstream, competitive employment in the Greater Miami area, has been featured in
national publications such as
The Saturday Evening Post and
New York Magazine.
In the April 9, 2025, issue of
Authority Magazine
featured President Jacko in their Unstoppable series, "How Virginia Jacko Has Redefined Success While Navigating Society as a Blind CEO."
In September 2024 Florida Trend recognized her as one of Florida's "Icons."
Virginia received a Master of Science from the College of Health and Human Sciences of Purdue University, West Lafayette, Indiana, and a
Batchelor of Business Administration with a major in Finance and a minor in Accounting from Loyola University, Chicago, Illinois.
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to view President Jacko's Awards, Publications, Webinars, Presentations and Professional and Community Service.
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