Perhaps unexpected, but lucky for Holderness. Next year Will Prickett ’81 will enter his fifth year as Chair of the Board of Trustees, and as an agent of stability through the flux of strategic planning. E CAN’T CLAIM THIS
as a hard fact without a lot of digging around in the archives, but by the time Will Prickett retires— probably—from the Board of Trustees in 2013, he will have completed a tenure as one of the school’s longer serving Board Chairs in recent decades. Not bad, and perhaps unexpected, for a kid from the flatlands of Delaware. But even as a native of Wilmington, Will loved to ski. As a boy he traveled often to Vermont and Idaho in the winter with his family, and he also spent his third-grade year skiing in Switzerland. There he learned French in a one-room schoolhouse in the mountains north of Lausanne, and skied frequently in the Swiss and French Alps. He had an uncle who was an alumnus of Holderness—Chris DuPont ’67—and a number of family friends with ties to the school. So actually, for Will at least, it was rather a well-groomed trail that led from Wilmington to Holderness. Then he had the sort of career here that you might predict for a future Board Chair: academic honors, and— besides racing on the Eastern alpine team—varsity lacrosse and co-captain of the football team, where he played running back and cornerback. He was editor of The Dial his senior year, and in the Job Program he was the Evening Steward, a position that roughly corresponds to today’s Weld Hall Supervisor. Will went on to Williams to study geology, but then a year he spent working as a paralegal in a law firm brought him back to Delaware, where he enrolled in Widener University’s law school. These days he’s a partner in the Boston office of the national law firm Seyfarth Shaw, LLP. But he never stopped being an involved and active friend to Holderness, and in 1998 Headmaster Pete Woodward asked Will to join the board as president of the Alumni Association. Will also served as a member of the search committee that select-
W
ed Phil Peck as the school’s new head, and then helped recruit friend and classmate Bill Baskin ’81 to become the next Alumni Association president in 2002. At that point Will continued as a member of the Board of Trustees. In 2008 Will became Chair of the Board, a job that particularly requires a lot of high-profile, laborintensive volunteer work. “And one particular strength of Will’s,” says Head of School Phil Peck, “has been his determination to keep the school’s Strategic Plan constantly in front of the board, and to constantly keep them focused on helping us to achieve that vision.” The typical term for Board Chair is three years, but Will agreed to a fourth year in order to provide continuity for the recent update of the Strategic Plan,
road map, and with a concerted team effort, everything will happen on time and on budget.” Will makes it sound like much will depend on the help he has, and has had, which is typical of a leadership style that mirrors Phil Peck’s—one that’s unusually inclusive and participatory. In fact, Will spelled out a blueprint for this
“If Holderness has taught you to understand the importance of caring for one another,
and the satisfaction of collaboration . . .”
and—again at the request of his board colleagues—has just agreed to a fifth year in order to provide continuity, this time as Phil takes a sabbatical in 20122013, and as Assistant Head Jory Macomber assumes the helm for that year. “That will be no problem,” Will says. “A new version of the Strategic Plan is in place, our exceptional Administrative Team will be otherwise intact next year, and Jory will be directly involved in planning sessions this spring for next year. We’ve got a great
style in his address last commencement to the Class of 2011: “If Holderness has taught you to understand the unmatched power of dedication, focus, and hard work; the importance of caring for one another; and the satisfaction of collaboration, then we have done much of what we said we would do.” For more than a decade now, Will himself has done just that for Holderness. Not bad for a kid from Delaware, or anywhere else.
Holderness School Today
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