Peter Ely has spent most of his Jesuit life teaching, writing and administering at Gonzaga University or Seattle University. He entered the novitiate upon graduation from Seattle Prep, taught regency at Jesuit High, completed his theology studies at Regis College in Toronto and his PhD at Fordham.

He taught theology, guided the scholastics at St. Michael's Institute and then served as Academic Vice President at Gonzaga University for 12 years. He then spent two years as pastor of St. Joseph's Parish in Seattle. After serving as rector of the Gonzaga U community for four years in Spokane, where he led the rebuilding of the south wing of Jesuit House, he came to Seattle University, where he has taught theology for the past decade and is currently also serving as Rector of the Jesuit Community and Province Consultor.

Peter is a man of great kindness and good humor, a lifelong Francophile, a writer of articles on leadership and theology, and a late-blooming mountaineer. He is the only Jesuit in the province to have read all of Marcel Proust’s seven-volume The Remembrance of Things Past in French.