Appalachian Today  | Alumni Association

Avery Hall ’93

Avery Hall ’93 is a senior vice president/business banker at Wachovia in Greensboro working with commercial clients with annual sales of $3 million to $25 million. He and his wife, Kristi, are raising two children in Kernersville, yet he finds time to serve on the boards of several community organizations: Greensboro Children’s Museum, 4 Extra Effort Inc. and Piney Grove Elementary PTA, to name a few.

Hall also serves on Appalachian State University’s Board of Trustees, having become one of the board’s newest members in August 2007.

The Gainesville, Ga., native has become an effective civic leader in North Carolina. But, he almost didn’t move to this state. Hall remembers that he planned to attend a large university in the Midwest but changed his mind at the last minute and came to Appalachian instead.

“I was attracted to the small classes, I felt comfortable there and the professors were nurturing and helpful. They wanted me to be successful. That’s what I remember about Appalachian,” he said.

Hall attended Appalachian on a football scholarship. Athletics was his ticket out of poverty, said the former All-American defensive tackle. Hall is proud to have graduated in four years and to play professional arena football for awhile before starting his banking career with First Union National Bank, now Wachovia, in 1993.

Hall rose steadily through the ranks, moving from the bank’s retail management associate program to branch manager and now senior vice president/business banker in Greensboro. Along the way, he earned an MBA degree from Pfeiffer University.

Hall was inducted into Appalachian’s Athletics Hall of Fame in 1999 and the Northeast Georgia History Center Sports Hall of Fame in 2004. He served as a football analyst for Appalachian Sports Network for seven years.

Hall says he continually uses life skills he learned playing football for the Mountaineers. “I call it your mental makeup: you win some, you lose some, but you keep the confidence and aren’t afraid to take business to the next level,” he says.