He quit a summer job as a taxi dispatcher in North Philadelphia after two days…ran Congressman Tom Foglietta’s Philadelphia office while he was in grad school…has authored two books widely respected books on urban history and policy…and made $10 an episode taping “What do you do?” segments for KYW as a Sixth Grader.
  At 46, Wendell Pritchett serves as chief executive officer of the state university’s Camden Campus, reporting directly to the Rutgers president Richard McCormick.
  As the not-so-new-anymore Chancellor of Rutgers-Camden, he is responsible for 5,600 students in 34 undergraduate programs and 16 graduate programs, as well as 1,000 employees and an annual budget of more than $50 million. 
  The son of an English teacher mother who spent 40 years in Philadelphia high schools and a musician father who was Director of Music for the Philadelphia Public Schools, Pritchett and his New York fashionista sister Paula grew up at 2nd and Locust in Philadelphia.
  He recalls that there were three lawyers from the (then prestigious, now defunct) firm of Wolf Block Schorr & Solis-Cohen who lived on his block and he credits them for their “mentor-like” role in pointing him toward a career as an attorney.
  In fact, he wound up clerking for the Wolf firm in high school, spent a summer there as a paralegal, became a summer associate while in law school, and eventually joined the firm after graduating from Yale Law School in 1991.
  Pritchett and his wife, Anne Kringel, a senior lecturer and legal writing director at  Penn Law met at Yale and live in the University City section of Philadelphia with their two daughters: Eleanor, 13, and Clara, 10.
  The Pritchett family likes to travel and count it as their only real “extravagance” with a summer in Paris, three weeks in Barcelona, and a trip to South Africa already recorded on their passports.
  With a 1997 Ph.D. in history from Penn to go with his undergraduate degree from Brown and his JD from Yale, it’s not surprising that Pritchett has written two books and numerous articles on topics relating to urban history and policy—particularly in the areas of housing, race relations, land use, and economic development. 
  His first book, which was based on his PhD dissertation and titled Brownsville, Brooklyn: Blacks, Jews, and the Changing Face of the Ghetto was published by the University of Chicago Press in 2002 and explored race relations and public policy in 20th century Brooklyn.
  He’s not sure how many copies have been sold—”maybe around 4,000…which is not bad for an academic book,” he says. 
  His more recent book, Robert Clifton Weaver and the American City: The Life and Times of an Urban Reformer was also published by the University of Chicago Press, This 2008 biography examines the life of the first African American cabinet secretary, a leading thinker and practitioner of 20th century urban development.
  While at Penn, Pritchett served as associate dean at the Law School during from 2006 to 2008, focusing on faculty development and improving the quality of experience for students.
  He was also a member of the faculty of the graduate programs of the School of Design and the history department in the School of Arts and Sciences, and was a founding member of the Penn Institute for Urban Research.
  He was also one of the principal investigators on a major federally funded project to examine racial disparities in the treatment of prostate cancer and served for three years on the Provost’s Planning and Budget Committee, the primary advisory group to Penn’s chief academic officer.
  Before coming to Penn’s Law School in 2001, Pritchett spent five years as assistant professor of history at Baruch College of the City University of New York.
  The new Rutgers-Camden Chancellor has set “collaboration with organizations to promote the revitalization of Camden” as one of his administration’s priorities. And he probably has a pretty good head start on understanding the challenges that the city faces given both his educational and career paths.
  Pritchett’s “first real job” was as Legislative Assistant for legendary South Philadelphia Congressman Tom Foglietta (two years in Washington and one heading up the Congressman’s district office). And in 2008 he served as deputy chief of staff and director of policy for Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter.
Pritchett describes Nutter as a “fascinating guy…a great leader…with a dead pan sense of humor..who has 15 minutes to deal with a problem before he has to move on to another problem.
  Among other initiatives while working for Nutter, Pritchett was responsible for writing the city’s Five-Year Plan and Budget, reorganizing the city’s anti-poverty programs, and supervising the operations of the mayor’s office. 
  During 2007, Pritchett chaired the Urban Policy Task Force for U.S. Senator Barack Obama’s presidential campaign and he calls the President the “most interesting person” he’s ever met.
  Pritchett, who says his toughest decision was going back to graduate school after working at Wolf Block, cites his selection for the Champion of Justice award, presented by Community Legal Services of Philadelphia (on whose board he served on for 10 years and chaired for three) as the honor of which he is most proud.
  Self described as “friendly, quiet, and hard-working,” Pritchett’s favorite thing to do is “hang out with my family. Calling her “my best friend,” he cites his wife Anne as his “favorite person.”
  Second on his list of favorite things to do is “play tennis.”
  Pritchett’s favorite book is Robert Caro’s The Power Broker, his favorite movie is the  Eddie Murphy classic Trading Places, and his favorite TV show is The Sopranos.
  His epitaph (as he would like it to be written) would be “He tried to make a difference.”
  If he could, invite five people (real, but living or dead) to dinner at his home, the five would be an eclectic combination of Stevie Winder, Bono, Lyndon Johnson, Eleanor Roosevelt, and Martin Luther King, Jr.
  A Phillies and Eagles fan, Pritchett has never had a personal brush with death or serious injury, but counts the death of a Rutgers student Jeremy King in Afghanistan in January as the event that created the most significant emotional reaction on his part in the past year.
  Finally, if the new Chancellor could do one thing to change South Jersey, it would it be “to figure out a way to give priority for resources to existing urban places.”
 
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By Mike Willmann
Pictured on front page: Senator Donald Norcross and Wendell Pritchett at the Rutgers Camden - The Senator Walter Rand Institute for Public Affairs - Ninth Annual Walter and Leah Rand Awards and Scholarship Event
Story photo: Wendell Pritchett