Fireside
Chat Speaker
Christopher
Wronsky '71
Director of Planned Giving, PEA
On campus on April 13, 2006
 Chris
grew up in New Jersey and entered Exeter on scholarship
in the fall of 1968. He attended the Academy when
it was an all boys' school and during the first
year of co-education. His parents had assumed that
he would be involved in education, but he did not
have a sufficient interest in any particular academic
specialty to pursue an advanced degree in it and
devote his life to happily teaching it. Absent
the passion for a particular subject, field or
topic he realized he could not become the kind
of teacher he had respected and admired during
the course of his time at Exeter or The University
of Virginia. After a stint working as an accountant
to prove that he could handle numbers in spite
of his liberal arts degree (late nineteenth century
existentialism) he moved to Seattle in the early
1980's and pursued a career in real estate appraisal
and counseling. He was awarded the MAI designation
and taught courses in Real Estate Analysis at the
national level. He was invited to membership in
the Counselors of Real Estate, elected president
of the local chapter, served as a trustee and chair
of the Washington Center for Real Estate Research,
served as trustee of the Urban Development Initiative
of the University of Washington and became the
trusted advisor to many individuals and non-profit
organizations.
Chris was an admission rep and founding board
member of the Exeter Association of Washington
and was instrumental in the development of the
summer school student scholarship program bringing
kids from the Seattle area to summer school at
the Academy. Chris found his work with and for
Exeter to be more satisfying than his professional
efforts and came to understand that he had been
actively avoiding making a career change for many
years. So, after the mid-life crisis career readjustment
Chris decamped from the real estate industry and
Washington State in 1999 and joined the development
office of Salisbury School in 1999. In 2002 he
returned to the Academy as a regional major gifts
officer and became director of planned giving in
2003. Chris now says that he is involved in "adult
education." He has given a lot of thought
to the relationship between wealth and happiness,
inheritance, philanthropy, and the important little
things in life such as maintaining tire pressures
and refilling ice trays.
He enjoys music of almost all types, film photography,
books and is a confessed "car guy." He's
also the proud parent of incoming-prep SoHo '10
and Zig '08.
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