It is my great pleasure to announce that following a highly competitive national search, Cathy Wood, MBA, will join the VCU School of Medicine as the senior associate dean for finance and administration on Aug. 1, 2021. Ms. Wood has more than 30 years of academic health care experience in administration leadership, strategic planning, leadership development, clinical practice, operations and revenue cycle management.
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For the past two years, Ms. Wood has held the position of assistant dean for internal consulting in the School of Medicine at Duke University, where she has worked collaboratively with the School of Medicine and Duke University Health System to develop and lead the creation of a new faculty practice plan. Additional strategic work in this role has focused on leading institutional and departmental organizational assessments.
Prior to her assistant dean role, she was the vice chair for administration in the Department of Medicine at Duke University School of Medicine. The department is home to more than 700 faculty members and ranked in the top five for NIH funding. Before arriving at Duke University, Ms. Wood spent 22 years at the Medical University of South Carolina as the vice chair for finance and administration in the Department of Medicine and five years at Wake Forest Baptist Health as the reimbursement manager in the faculty practice plan.
Ms. Wood earned her master of business administration from the Citadel College of Graduate and Professional Studies and her bachelor of science degree in accounting from Radford University. She has served in a variety of leadership positions in national organizations, including the Association of Academic Medical Colleges and Administrators of Internal Medicine (AIM), for which she served two terms as president, as well as serving on the executive board of the Alliance for Academic Internal Medicine. She has been honored with the Medical University of South Carolina Excellence in Action Award and the AIM Distinguished Service Award.
Ms. Wood will join VCU this August at an opportune time, as we look toward a post-COVID future and renew our strategic planning effort. As we welcome Ms. Wood to VCU, we offer our thanks to the search committee, chaired by Dr. David Cifu and Mr. Niles Eggleston; the search committee members; Ms. Carol Ann Lawson and her executive search team; and all who participated in the interview days.
With all good wishes,
