Griffin Has a Passion for Wakefield Admissions

By Leonard Shapiro

Gray Carr Griffin has done sales and marketing for major companies, once start-ed her own wildlife photography business and helped produce the television show “Zaboomafoo” that actually replaced “Barney” on PBS. She’s a walking, talking dy-namo who’s passion for the task at hand is quite obvious.

And the current passion at hand is Wakefield School in The Plains.

Last July, the North Carolina native and Duke graduate was hired to handle the school’s marketing and public relations. These days, she also occupies another critical position as director of admissions for a 326-student junior kindergarten through 12th grade institution located high on a hill overlooking a breathtaking view of nearby Bull Run Mountain.

“I hate to say it’s about sales,” Griffin said of her role in a recent interview on campus. “But it is about selling the school. “Our story about Wakefield needs to reach a broader community. We need to get the message out that there’s this hidden gem out on the hill. I just don’t like the hidden part.”

Griffin has plenty of skin in this game, Her two sons, Jack, 14, and Benjamin, 12, have been at Wakefield the last four years, so she knows full well what sort of edu-cation they’re receiving.

“Both of them learn very differently from each other,” she said. “But the school has been able to develop their strengths and understand their weaknesses and expose them to things they wouldn’t normally have explored and also helped them find new passions.”

Wakefield attracts students from all around the area, and also has 20 interna-tional students from China, Korea and Spain who help add to the diversity while also getting a first-class education. Many Wakefield graduates attend some of America’s finest colleges and universities.

Griffin and other school administrators and faculty members also get plenty of feedback from the colleges their alums attend. It’s mostly all positive.

“Universities have told us these children walk away from here knowing how to communicate,” she said. “They write extremely well and they’re extremely verbal. They also tell us that once they get on their campus, they get plugged in right away. They join clubs. They get involved in intramural sports or even play a sport (on a school team). They’ll try out for a play, join a theater group, play an instrument. I can tell you that not one of our students ever sits idle here.”

Asked about Wakefield’s reputation for offering a rigorous and highly competi-tive academic environment, Griffin said “rigorous is an interesting word. Every student can explore how deeply they want to go. We have students who take a lot of AP (ad-vanced placement) classes. We also have students who don’t, but may want to do something in the arts, for example.

“There’s a level of independence that exposes the child to however they want to be exposed. They’re exposed to writing, to photography, to STEM (science, technolo-gy, engineering and math). So many things. We also hear from colleges that if they’re assigned a five to seven-page paper in class, they know how to research it and write it. If that’s rigorous, I’m okay with that.”

She’s also more than okay with what she describes as the school’s close-knit and “kind community. The parents are plugged in. The grandparents are plugged in. And families also do a great job in spreading our message by word of mouth.”

Griffin said Wakefield’s admissions process will remain quite selective, and she hopes the school will continue to grow in number of students and faculty.

“We want the right fit,” she said. “We look at each student and make sure this is the right place. If a student needs more resources, our counselors can can direct them to a school that may suit them better. Sometimes they’ll go off to that school, and then come back here.”

Griffin herself came back to the Middleburg area in 2004. As a youngster who loved to ride, she often went fox-hunting in this neck of Northern Virginia, and she still regularly goes tally ho with the Warrenton Hunt. Her husband, Al Griffin, an or-thodontist who also rides, is race director for the Gold Cup, and the family lives on a farm just outside Marshall.

They clearly love the lifestyle, and Gray Carr Griffin quite obviously adores her work at Wakefield.

“I tell parents my own story is extremely authentic,” she said. “I live and breathe this place. I’m a parent. I’m a faculty member. I see and hear about my chil-dren’s progress on a daily basis. And the best part is that I get to tell people about Wakefield.”