Tony Wood

Entrepreneur | Business | Fundraising

Colonel Anthony A. Wood is a Marine Corps combat veteran whose career extended for more than thirtyZfour years. In the first of his two combat tours in Viet Nam he served as a platoon commander in operations with the Republic of Korea Blue Dragon Brigade. During his second tour he commanded a joint contingent in MIA resolution operations. He is well known for his heroic role in the evacuation of Saigon in April of 1975 at the close of the Viet Nam War. Then Captain Wood organized a group of American civilian volunteers who assumed great personal risk to remain without protection and evacuate over 5,000 persons from the collapsing capital Later, as Chief of Staff of Marine Forces in the Pacific, Colonel Wood journeyed to Vladivostok and Khabarovsk in Siberia charged with negotiating a tension reduction agreement with the senior leadership of the Russian Pacific Fleet and the Russian Far East Military District. That bilateral agreement remains in force today. Finally, as founder and first Commander of the Marine Corps Warfighting Laboratory, Colonel Wood led and inspired an institution whose ground breaking and unorthodox experiments were directly responsible for a host of operational innovations that saw implementation in Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere.

On his retirement from the Marine Corps in July 1998, he was the only Colonel or Captain in any of the United States Armed Services to have twice been decorated with the nation’s second highest award, the Distinguished Service Medal. He also earned the Legion of Merit, the Bronze Star with Combat V, the meritorious Service Medal, the Joint Service Commendation medal (multiple awards), the Humanitarian Assistance Medal, and the Combat Action Ribbon (multiple awards).

After his military career Colonel Wood joined the faculty of the California Polytechnic State University as Director for Applied Research at the Collaborative Agent Design Research Center. At the same time he became Vice President, COO, and Partner in CDM Technologies Inc., an advanced software development company providing sophisticated decision support tools to the Department of Defense and American industry. Since the sale of CDM Technologies to the Boeing Company in 2011, Colonel Wood has continued to serve in a variety of capacities on boards and as both a consultant and inspirational speaker on leadership to senior executives, symposia, universities, and audiences of all types.

Colonel Wood and his wife Elizabeth reside in Dallas Texas. He may be reached at colonelanthonyawood859@gmail.com. His website address is https://colaawood.wixsite.com/cmd1/home