Our Team
The work of the Hereditary Disease Foundation is facilitated by our leadership team and guided by our Board of Directors and our Scientific Advisory Board.
Leadership Team
Meghan Donaldson
Meghan Donaldson
Chief Executive Officer
Nancy S. Wexler, PhD
Nancy has devoted her career to finding treatments and cures for Huntington’s disease. She led the HDF’s history-making Venezuela Project, a 22-year international collaborative team, studying the world’s largest Huntington’s disease family in Venezuela, collecting tissue samples, and developing a family tree of over 18,000 individuals spanning 10 generations.
This work led to the discovery of the DNA marker for Huntington’s disease in 1983 and the HD gene itself in 1993. This same genetic material has assisted in the mapping of other disease genes, including those responsible for familial Alzheimer’s disease, kidney cancer, two kinds of neurofibromatosis, Lou Gehrig’s disease (ALS), dwarfism and others. One important result of this work was developing a genetic test to determine if an individual carries the HD gene.
In 2020, the HDF established the Nancy S. Wexler Young Investigator Prize to be awarded annually to researchers whose work reflects the highest caliber of excellence, diligence and creative thinking. Dr. Wexler has received numerous awards and honors for her work including honorary doctorates from the University of Michigan, Bard College and Yale. She headed a landmark Congressional Commission on the Control and Consequences of Huntington’s Disease from 1976 to 1978. She chaired the Ethical, Legal and Social Implications Working Group of the Human Genome Project.
Nancy S. Wexler, PhD
President
Julie Porter
Julie Porter
Director of Administration
Sarah Hernandez, PhD
Dr. Sarah Hernandez oversees the Foundation’s scientific research portfolio by managing the grants program, acting as the scientific liaison, and coordinating scientific programming through webinars, workshops, and conferences. Sarah enthusiastically supports the mission of the HDF, working closely with its Scientific Advisory Board to identify the most promising research and accelerate treatments for Huntington’s disease.
Sarah learned at a young age that her family was affected by Huntington’s disease, motivating her to learn more and inspiring her to become a scientist. In 2015, she received a PhD in Biology and Biotechnology from Worcester Polytechnic Institute. For her postdoctoral studies, she joined the lab of renowned Huntington’s disease scientist Leslie Thompson, PhD, at the University of California, Irvine and Chair-Elect, HDF Scientific Advisory Board. There she worked on understanding the molecular consequences of Huntington’s disease to cells of the brain using stem cells and fruit flies. In 2021, she was honored as the recipient of the Hereditary Disease Foundation Nancy S. Wexler Young Investigator Prize, presented to a researcher whose work represents the highest caliber of excellence, diligence, and creative thinking. Additionally, Sarah is an editor for HDBuzz, writing articles about Huntington’s disease-related science and research news in plain language for the patient community.
Sarah Hernandez, PhD
Director of Research Programs
