MDA's Wings Over Wall Street® 2020

2020 was supposed to be the 20th Anniversary Gala but SARS CoV-2, better known as COVID-19, obliterated our plans for a sit-down dinner at Guastavino’s. Because this was our 20th Anniversary, the honorees were IEX with the Humanitarian Award, Victor Wright with the Beier Award, Patty Haberstroh with the Spirit Award, and all the past honorees for a special Diamond Award for their ALS research.

Instead, we moved to a virtual gala and joined forces with the MDA's virtual gala, "Make Your Move," on May1-2, 2020.  This was followed by our participation in MDA's "Night of Hope" virtual gala on October 23, 2020.

In spite of the pandemic and the need to postpone the 20th Anniversary celebration, your generous donations allowed Wings to raise over $225,000 for ALS research.

MDA's Wings Over Wall Street® 2021

In 2021, with the pandemic still with us, Wings put together a virtual panel discussion on ALS, hosted by Bill Ritter, a well-known news anchor for ABC Channel 7 in New York. The panel discussion took place as part of ALS Awareness Month on May 20, 2021. The virtual panel discussion included the following and you can watch it here:

  • Dr. Sabrina Pagonini and Dr. Merit Cudkowicz discussed the MDA's $500,000 grant for the Healey Platform, which is the first ALS platform trial accelerating the path to new ALS therapies by testing multiple treatments at once. 
  • Moderated by Dr. Neil Shneider and featuring Dr. Stanley Appel, the two discussed the groundbreaking MDA human clinical trial grant totaling $558,800 over two-and-a-half years to expand the first-in-human study that demonstrated promising results leveraging patients’ own immune cells to treat ALS. 
  • Experts from the pharmaceutical industry discussed how they are committed to developing safe and effective treatments for those impacted by ALS.
  • Jon Najarian and Warren Schiffer, co-founder of Wings, discussed the impact of taking care and losing a loved one to ALS.
The virtual event concluded with a Mission Moment hosted by Bill Ritter, Anchor ABC News, in memory of Pat Quinn, co-founder of ALS Ice Bucket Challenge, to raise over $187,000 for critically needed ALS research.
Additionally, Jamie Schiffer led an effort to create a Bar Trivia Night for Wings at three New York City bars, held on May 13, 2021 and raised almost $6,000.

 

 

 

 

 

 MDA's Wings Over Wall Street® 2022

In 2022, we returned to a live event and finally had our sit down dinner at Guastavino's under the 59th Street bridge. With IEX as our presenting sponsor, we had a terrific dinner. Our honorees included Sabrina Paganoni, MD, PhD, from Harvard Medical School as the Diamond Award receipient, Russ Salzberg, legendary sportscaster, as the receipient of our Humanitarian Award, Leah Stavenhagen, founder of Her ALS Story, as the receipient of the Spirit Award, and Bill Ritter, news anchor, ABC Channel 7 Eyewitness News, who did double-duty as the host, as the recipient of the Beier Award.


Most impactful and meaningful was the presentation made by Leah and several of her Her ALS Story members, who each told their story of their personal struggle with ALS as young women, daughers, wives and mothers. There was not a dry eye in the room.

Additonally, another Bar Trivia Night was held on May 19, 2021. In total we raised over $235,000 for ALS research.


Stay tuned as MDA's Wings Over Wall Street® continues to provide significant funds to the MDA-ALS Research Initiative and the research teams at Columbia and Johns Hopkins in 2023 and beyond until a cure is found.