Today, MDA announced new appointments to its board of directors. Steven J. Farella will now serve as chairman and Donald S. Wood, PhD, will serve as vice chairman of the MDA Board of Directors.

“We are very pleased to share that both Steven Farella and Dr. Donald Wood have accepted their new positions on the board of the Muscular Dystrophy Association,” says MDA President and CEO Lynn O’Connor Vos. “They have been tremendous assets to building our organization’s future and their leadership will help us as we continue to evolve our organization’s mission and vision for the future.”

Mr. Farella, who has served on the board for several years, is transitioning from leading the  governance committee to the chairman role. Farella has deep business experience: he is chairman of the board of directors of MDC Media Partners, has recently launched an angel investing firm, VFL Investments & Advisory, and chairs the advisory board for St. John’s University’s Collins College of Professional Studies. He has also launched several successful media agencies, including Havas Media USA and TargetCast tcm. Farella holds a bachelor’s degree in communications from St. John’s University.

Dr. Wood has served MDA since 1980, when he launched and managed the organization’s genetics task force, which led to the discovery of the genetic cause of muscular dystrophy. Dr. Wood began his career in neuromuscular disease research at Columbia Presbyterian Medical Center in New York as a postdoctoral research fellow at the National Institutes of Health (NIH).

In the 1990s, Dr. Wood co-founded two genetic development companies and was appointed president and chief operating officer of IntegraMed America Inc. Dr. Wood now serves as vice president of Institutional Effectiveness and director of the Odessa College Leadership Institute. He holds a doctorate degree in physiology from Washington State University.