At a BFIT career fair at the end of her senior year, Munu Shrestha received several job offers and accepted a student optician position at Warby Parker. Just four years later, she is the licensed optical manager for the company’s Newbury Street store and an evangelist for the field of opticianry.
She had been working at a cafeteria and repeatedly changing majors at her community college when a customer recommended she check out the Opticianry program at BFIT. “I’ve been wearing glasses since I was 5 years old, but I had no idea opticianry was a career,” Shrestha said.
Opticianry—the business of designing, fitting, and dispensing glasses and contact lenses—is one of the fastest growing careers in the nation.
The hands-on Opticianry labs built both Shrestha’s skills and her confidence. “We got experience cutting the lenses and everything. I was ready to go into an actual work setting and perform because we had trained for that,” she said.
Shrestha said BFIT professors and staff were incredibly supportive, providing extra help or tutoring whenever she needed it and connecting her with free textbooks through Library Services. She also received a Women in Technology Scholarship to help cover her tuition. “Whatever need I had, it was fulfilled by the school,” she said.
Today, Shrestha is happy to serve as a resource for current and future Opticianry students. “I want to give new BFIT students the same opportunities that I got,” she said.
-Published July 8, 2021
