PHILADELPHIA — U.S. Air Force veteran Jonathan Wood, a student pursuing a joint degree in medicine and business administration from the Perelman School of Medicine (PSOM) and the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania has been named a 2016 Tillman Scholar by the Pat Tillman Foundation. Wood is the first PSOM student to receive this prestigious award recognizing U.S. service members, veterans, and military spouses for leadership and excellence by investing in their higher education.
Wood joined PSOM in 2013 at age 32 as the oldest member of his class. His ambitions to help lead a nationwide movement to inspire service-minded clinicians to practice in underserved urban communities in the United States motivated him to combine his medical degree with a master’s in business administration. Penn’s joint MD/MBA program integrates the study of medicine with training in managerial, financial, and technical expertise in the health care field. Sixty-five percent of medical students at Penn graduate with a joint degree or certificate.
“Penn's interdisciplinary offerings allow me to customize my training to fit the challenges of primary care in underserved communities,” Wood said. “When I began medical school, I didn't know exactly what training I would need, but I knew that at Penn it would be possible to find it along the way.”
Wood was commissioned as a U.S. Air Force officer shortly after Sept. 11, 2001, while he was an undergraduate student at Yale University and a member of Yale’s Air Force Reserve Officer Training Corps program. He served as a U.S. Air Force intelligence officer for eight years, including four deployments and eventually earned the rank of captain. For five of his eight years, Wood worked with special tactics units, consisting of special operators with expertise in complex rescue operations and close air support. He also deployed in support of direct counterterrorism operations.
After leaving the Air Force, Wood spent three months in Uganda, Zambia, and the Congo, shadowing doctors to learn more about health care in resource-limited settings. Wood also worked with underserved communities in Memphis, Tenn. and Baltimore. Md. before enrolling in medical school at Penn. Wood currently lives in north Philadelphia and continues to volunteer his time helping the community he hopes to one day serve in his role as a physician.
This year, the Tillman Foundation will award a total of $1.8 million to 60 active-duty U.S. military service members, veterans, and military spouses to cover direct study-related expenses, including tuition and fees, books, and living expenses for scholars who are pursuing undergraduate, graduate, or post-graduate degrees as a full-time student at a public or private, U.S.-based accredited institution.
“I'm honored to be associated with Pat Tillman's name as a Tillman Scholar,” Wood said. “One remarkable thing about Tillman was his readiness to walk away from his NFL contract, with all the fame and wealth it promised, in order to follow his conscience and service his country. In a less dramatic way, we who train at Penn can follow in his footsteps and eschew the paths to prestige and comfort in order to have a meaningful impact in communities where our skills are desperately needed.”
More information about the Tillman Foundation and a full list of the 2016 Tillman Scholars can be found here.
Founded in 1881 as the first collegiate business school, the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania is recognized globally for intellectual leadership and ongoing innovation across every major discipline of business education. With a broad global community and one of the most published business school faculties, Wharton creates economic and social value around the world. The School has 5,000 undergraduate, MBA, executive MBA, and doctoral students; more than 9,000 participants in executive education programs annually and a powerful alumni network of 94,000 graduates.
Penn Medicine is one of the world’s leading academic medical centers, dedicated to the related missions of medical education, biomedical research, excellence in patient care, and community service. The organization consists of the University of Pennsylvania Health System and Penn’s Raymond and Ruth Perelman School of Medicine, founded in 1765 as the nation’s first medical school.
The Perelman School of Medicine is consistently among the nation's top recipients of funding from the National Institutes of Health, with $550 million awarded in the 2022 fiscal year. Home to a proud history of “firsts” in medicine, Penn Medicine teams have pioneered discoveries and innovations that have shaped modern medicine, including recent breakthroughs such as CAR T cell therapy for cancer and the mRNA technology used in COVID-19 vaccines.
The University of Pennsylvania Health System’s patient care facilities stretch from the Susquehanna River in Pennsylvania to the New Jersey shore. These include the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, Penn Presbyterian Medical Center, Chester County Hospital, Lancaster General Health, Penn Medicine Princeton Health, and Pennsylvania Hospital—the nation’s first hospital, founded in 1751. Additional facilities and enterprises include Good Shepherd Penn Partners, Penn Medicine at Home, Lancaster Behavioral Health Hospital, and Princeton House Behavioral Health, among others.
Penn Medicine is an $11.1 billion enterprise powered by more than 49,000 talented faculty and staff.