Christine DeVita, Chair

About Chris

Chris DeVita, a New York native and North Carolina resident since 2011, is the former president of The Wallace Foundation, an independent national foundation dedicated to improving the lives of disadvantaged children in American cities by providing more opportunities to learn, both in and out of school, and to bringing the arts to new audiences.  Under Chris’ leadership The Wallace Foundation developed a unified strategy for all of its work, combining program, evaluation and communication expertise.  With its partners, Wallace develops and tests useful ideas “on the ground,” gathers credible evidence on the results of significant innovations, and then shares what it has learned with the individuals and institutions that can help bring the best ideas to life.  Its work was profiled in Creative Philanthropy by Helmut K. Anheier and Diana Leat and was the subject of two cases studies published by the Center for Effective Philanthropy.

Since moving to Chatham County, Chris has served on the Board of Directors of The Learning Trail, a nonprofit that offers academic tutoring to children in preschool through 8^th grade.  The Learning Trail serves primarily a Latino population in the Nature Trail, a community of approximately 200 mobile homes in north Chatham County.

Chris has also served on the board of directors of The Foundation Center (where she was chair) and the Center for Effective Philanthropy. She was also a member of the visiting committee of Harvard’s Graduate School of Education

Chris earned her B.A. degree magna cum laude from Queens College of the City University of New York and her J.D. degree cum laude from Fordham University School of Law where she was an editor of the Fordham Law Review.