Jonathan Board suspends state Senate run to accept executive director role of WV First Foundation

Jonathan Board, the newly appointed executive director for the West Virginia First Foundation, speaks to reporters during a news briefing on Thursday, March 14, 2024, in the state attorney general's office in Charleston, W.Va. (Screenshot from attorney general's livestream)

Jonathan Board, a current board member of the West Virginia First Foundation, will soon take over as the private nonprofit’s executive director following a monthslong national search to fill the position, according to a Thursday announcement from state Attorney General Patrick Morrisey.

For the past several months, Board has been running a campaign to represent Marion County as a Republican in the state Senate. During Thursday’s announcement, Morrisey said Board agreed to suspend that campaign to focus solely on running the First Foundation.

“That was very important for me,” Morrisey said, “because I want to make sure that we have a full-time [executive director] and not someone who is going to be torn away by any politics.”

Last year, the state contracted with a national search firm to fill the executive director position. Morrisey said himself and First Foundation members went through about 100 resumes and conducted 18 to 20 interviews with people interested in leading the organization, which is responsible for distributing millions in state dollars collected from opioid settlements in recent years. Board, he continued, was the “jewel right underneath us, here in West Virginia.”

“This is going to be an incredible opportunity, because there’s real work that needs to be done. There’s healing that needs to begin in the great state of West Virginia,” Morrisey said. “Having a strong executive director means everything, and having someone who is going to be devoted to the community and the well-being of the state — that matters.“

Board was regionally elected to sit on the First Foundation last year, representing counties in North Central West Virginia. Upon his appointment as executive director, local leaders will work with the attorney general’s office to fill the vacancy on the foundation’s board under guidelines set in the organization’s founding documents .

At a meeting following Morrisey’s announcement on Thursday, First Foundation members unanimously accepted Board’s resignation from the board and approved terms of employment for the executive director position. A salary, however, has not yet been finalized, but board chair Matt Harvey said that it will be public when it is.

The foundation’s board also voted to allow Board to assume the executive director role immediately and, through several motions, gave him the authority to conduct business on behalf of the foundation.

Board currently serves as vice president of external affairs at Mon Health System and Vandalia Health, in Morgantown. He said he will be stepping down from that role immediately to take the full-time position at the First Foundation.

A graduate from Fairmont State University and the West Virginia University College of Law, he said he’s spent several years working on health care policy in West Virginia, both on the local and national level in Washington, D.C. He said he looks forward to bringing his experiences and insights from both the medical and nonprofit sectors to the First Foundation, with a focus on forming partnerships across communities and industries to help lessen the damage from the ongoing drug and overdose epidemic, which has hit West Virginia especially hard.

“This is a vitally important day, but this day has very little to do with one individual or even a group of individuals,” Board said. “Today is about the people of the state of West Virginia. We have a lot of work to do.”

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