Fairfield principal leaving education for financial planning

FAIRFIELD — Given that Fairfield Freshman School Principal Matt Wissman was always a numbers guy, perhaps it should come as no surprise that he’s leaving his job at the end of this school year to become a financial planner.

Wissman, a Fairfield High School graduate of the class of 1993, will not be leaving the area. He will be joining the local firm Ameriprise. He has been with the district for 15 years, having also been a teacher and a basketball coach.

“It was a very tough decision,” he said. “This was something I got approached with a little bit over a year ago. I kind of just shrugged it off.”

Nevertheless, the opportunity came knocking again.

“It’s actually very similar to what I do now, in that it’s so people oriented. It’s what I liked most about the (new) job. You meet with families and help with their financial planning. That excited me. I’m a numbers guy. I taught for math for nine years and as crazy as it sounds, I do kind of miss the numbers. I started off in college as a business major, so this isn’t totally foreign to me,” he said.

While he graduated from Wilmington College as a business major, he gravitated toward education because so many people close to him were or are teachers or administrators.

“My grandpa was a principal, my dad was a teacher, my sister’s a teacher, my wife’s a teacher. It’s kind of the family business,” he said with a smile.

It also led Wissman to being the high school’s basketball coach from 2000 to 2005, so watching the team’s championship run this year was particularly sweet, he said.

“The run the team had this year was exactly what the community needed, especially after the successful levy in the fall,” he said.

Having made his decision to switch careers, he told Superintendent Paul Otten that he felt “selfish” making the switch, but he needed to do what was best for his family.

Taking Wissman’s place will be Katie Pospisil, currently principal at the middle school.

“It’s very exciting,” she said. “It’s going to be a great journey. I was a high school history teacher, so forming a bridge from the middle school to the high school is exciting.”

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