Then and Now: Wood helps Jones Center reimagine 55-acre campus

Dina Wood has been a philanthropic adviser and fundraiser for area institutions for 22 years.
She recently joined the Jones Center in Springdale amid a project to reimagine its 55-acre campus. She’ll help to support the project as she leads the nonprofit’s fundraising team.

“The idea of building something that’s so important to the region so everyone feels welcome and thrives regardless of age, income or demographic … helps keep me grounded, helps give me focus, helps me understand the impact that I can personally have on the city in which I live and a place where I work,” she said.

Wood resides in downtown Springdale and is board chair of Downtown Springdale Alliance.

“On a good day I can walk to work, so I am fully vested in what the vision is for the Jones Center,” she added. “And with our new CEO, Joe Lloyd, and his vision, it meshes so well with what I hope to accomplish here as a philanthropic adviser and a development professional. I just had to do it.”

A Huntsville native, Wood was director of development at the University of Arkansas Fulbright College of Arts and Sciences when the Northwest Arkansas Business Journal named her to the Forty Under 40 class in 2003.

She spent 12 years at the UA, working on its first billion-dollar campaign and providing strategic planning for its second billion-dollar campaign. She was senior director of development and external relations before joining Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art as its first director of development, where she worked for two years.

“It was one of the most outstanding career decisions I made,” she said. “The only reason I left was because my friends at UAMS came calling and challenged me to help them build an academic medical center in Northwest Arkansas. It was a very thoughtful process that I went through to decide whether I wanted to shift away from helping build out this dynamic, cultural institution in Crystal Bridges to going back to the University of Arkansas System that I knew well and had worked in previously, just in an academic medicine context. I decided … the impact of my work could be seen and felt by the community in helping build out the academic medical campus at UAMS Northwest.”

In 2014, she was named senior director of development at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences Northwest Regional Campus in Fayetteville. There, she handled foundational work for a major gift program. She helped the Department of Physical Therapy go from an idea to opening and secured about $4 million in philanthropic support. She also helped UAMS launch an occupational therapy program and an internal medicine residency with Mercy, and she worked closely with UAMS’ Office of Community Health and Research.

In 2021, she joined the United Way of Northwest Arkansas as vice president of individual engagement. Before joining the Jones Center, she was executive vice president and chief advancement officer for the United Way, which allowed her to work as a nonprofit administrator and as the No. 2 person in the organization.

Her career highlight has been “learning the skills of helping philanthropists connect areas where they’re passionate and knowing how to do that.”

Wood has been an attorney for 35 years, and her area of expertise is planned giving and estate planning. During the Clinton-Gore administration, she worked in Washington, D.C., and the White House for seven years. President Bill Clinton appointed her to serve in the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, the White House Office of Presidential Personnel, and the Overseas Private Investment Corp. as director of the Office of Congressional and Intergovernmental Affairs.

“We changed the world … Working at the White House was the most tremendous honor that I will ever experience,” she said. “I was privileged to be part of that at a time and for a person who I believed in and still believe in and be surrounded by people who were my friends and colleagues.”

She’s a board member for Arts One Presents and the University of Arkansas Women’s Giving Circle. She enjoys spending time in downtown Springdale, cooking, wine tasting and performing arts.