Together as Brothers News

Kathy Fitzgerald and her husband, Ward Fitzgerald ’81, a 2018 inductee into the La Salle College High School Hall of Fame and former member of the school’s Board of Trustees, have agreed to a $10 million donation that will establish the Fitzgerald Lasallian Scholars Fund and become a seed investment in the Campus expansion plans. The fund’s purpose is to attract to La Salle some of the brightest and academically talented Catholic students in the Delaware Valley who without such scholarship and/or financial assistance might matriculate to competitor secular institutions. The gift, which is the largest ever to the school, will provide young men with not only an outstanding education, but an opportunity to foster their faith.

Ward Fitzgerald is the current CEO of ExCorde Capital and former Chief Executive Officer and Senior Managing Principal of Exeter Property Group. Exeter was acquired by EQT, an international leader in private equity in 2021, and continues as a global leader in real estate investment management with over 50 offices around the world. Since the firm’s founding in 2006, it has secured approximately $30 billion in fund equity commitments, representing pension, sovereign wealth, endowment, insurance, and foundation partners from around the globe. Exeter’s funds have made over 1,800 real estate investments, corresponding to over 2,500 properties in the warehouse/logistics, office/life science and multifamily sectors. Prior to founding Exeter, Ward was part of the senior management team at Rouse/Liberty Property Trust, a publicly traded office and industrial REIT, which he helped take public in 1994.

Ward and his wife, Kathy, are prominent Philadelphia benefactors and ardent supporters of the Catholic church who are committed to community philanthropy focused on Catholic education, homelessness, addiction, trafficking, and medical research. They have funded Project Home facilities including The Inn of Amazing Mercy Kensington, the National Center for Padre Pio, the Catholic Leadership Institute, the University of Notre Dame Institute for Real Estate, Thomas Jefferson University Hospital’s Neurology Department, and Franciscan University, as well as other charitable endeavors.

The couple are Trustees to the Papal Foundation and were named Knight and Dame Grand Cross in the Order of Saint Gregory the Great for their contributions during the 2015 World Meeting of Families. In 2025, they will receive the Saint Charles Borromeo Award for their leadership within both local and broader Catholic communities.

I first came to know Ward Fitzgerald while we were both Trustees here at La Salle in the very early years of the 21^st century. Then I was impressed by his intensity, his inquisitiveness, the depth and variety of his commitments, his passion for his faith and the community in which it is rooted. Over the past two decades, little about that initial assessment has changed. I came to know Ward’s family, his mother while she was with us, his wife Kathy and the children they have raised, who are themselves such passionate advocates. I learned a bit more about private real estate and the esteem, perhaps awe, in which Ward is held by his fellow professionals in the field.  I also saw his and Kathy’s work in service of the Church, particularly to the World Meeting of Families and the building of the new Saint Charles Borromeo Seminary.

And now his and Kathy’s generosity and vision place them among La Salle’s all-time greatest benefactors and is cemented by this $10,000,000 pledge supporting the expansion of our facilities and – in a cause Ward has long championed – providing opportunities to deserving young Catholic men from ordinary backgrounds with the creation of the Fitzgerald Lasallian Scholars, a legacy which will enhance our school community in perpetuity. 

The Ward and Kathy Fitzgerald I know would never re-focus the spotlight from where they would always judge it belongs. So, as they would want us to say, let us offer a Deo Gratias that God has brought the Fitzgeralds into the lives of so many present and future students of La Salle College High School.

          Brother James L. Butler, FSC
          President, La Salle College High School