James D. Wright (P.C.), trustee of the Phillip E. and Carole R. Ratcliffe Foundation, is a retired partner at Venable LLP, where he was honored as a “top lawyer” in Maryland for 36 years. Wright, who joined Venable, Baetjer and Howard in 1970, and was head of its Real Estate Practice Group from 1985-2012. Prior to joining Venable, he clerked for Judge Frank A. Kaufman at the Federal District Court of Maryland.

As trustee of the Ratcliffe Foundation, Wright has overseen the organization’s major gifts to the College, including a $5 million gift in 2019 that funded the Ratcliffe Center for Creative Entrepreneurship. Other major grants from the Foundation in 2015 and 2017 established MICA’s annual UP/Start Venture Competition and entrepreneurship educational programming. Wright also helps steer the Foundation’s other transformative gifts to encourage entrepreneurship in non-traditional business fields.

In addition to chairing the Board of Trustees at the Ratcliffe Foundation, he is a past chair of the Gunston School Board of Trustees and treasurer of the Kent and Queen Anne’s County Horizon Program. A longtime resident of Bolton Hill, near MICA, Wright was born in Centreville, MD, in Queen Anne’s County. He received his JD from Harvard University and BA from the University of Delaware.