POULTNEY — Tommie Zito was visiting Vermont to preach for congregations in Rutland and Burlington earlier this year when he learned of a call for the “third great awakening” from the owner of the defunct Green Mountain College.
The whiskey merchant and former media personality Raj Bhakta, who bought the campus for over $4 million in 2020, put it up for donation to a Catholic organization seeking to revive “Western Civilization” in late February.
Zito, a Florida evangelist, said Bhakta’s pitch caught his attention as he had been looking for a place to land and open up a Christian university in recent years.
“‘If it’s an awakening you’re looking for,’ I said, ‘I’m the awakener,’” Zito said in an interview on July 31, referring to his work evangelizing internationally. “I run the American awakening, Canadian awakening, Italian awakening, Japanese awakening, Dubai awakening.”
Zito sat down for an interview with VTDigger on a muggy Friday afternoon in one of Bhakta’s lounge areas in Withey Hall.
He ran late to the meeting as he said he was baptising around 20 people in the Poultney River just prior. Later that night, Zito held a banquet seeking donations to his nonprofit educational venture, which saw 200 attendees, he said after the event.
Zito will not be acquiring the campus through donation. The deal is yet to be disclosed, but it is a “fair price,” Zito said. The transfer is planned for the fall, as Zito is waiting for Bhakta to move out of the campus.
“It’s a big operation, so we’re just taking a slow road,” Zito said.
Bhakta had several large-scale plans for the former college — including a sustainable agriculture initiative or a hotel with some residential development — but that never came to fruition after clashes with the town over a tax stabilization agreement and failing to complete Act 250 requirements. The state also alleged Bhakta violated Act 250 by modifying the buildings and operating a school and whiskey business on campus in March while searching for a new owner of the college. Bhakta — also known for his appearance on President Donald Trump’s reality TV show “The Apprentice” and a political stunt involving an elephant and a mariachi band — planned to donate the college by late April, but the spring came and went with no announcement.
Suddenly, as the country was celebrating its 250th anniversary last month, Vermonters caught wind of a Florida preacher posting on social media that he would be taking over the Poultney campus for a Christian school called ‘Z University.’ Bhakta’s team previously confirmed with VTDigger that Zito was indeed the planned recipient of the nearly 200-year-old college campus.
He plans to name the college ‘Z University’ after his father, who he said was a lay preacher while Zito was growing up and inspired his preaching.
Zito plans to enroll the first batch of Z University students in August of 2027, and wants to offer an AI-driven curriculum for Christians to study government, digital media, music and creative arts and evangelism and global missions, among other possible classes. He eventually wants to open similar schools around the world, but he said “the Lord told me America first…we had to create a model here first.”
Who is Tommie Zito?
Zito, 52, has served as an evangelical preacher for nearly 30 years, since dropping out of college where he studied sociology and psychology. Though he spends approximately 200 days a year preaching around the world, Zito said his family is rooted in South Florida.
Zito said his father was an orphan in the Brooklyn Boys Home in New York, and witnessed abuse from the leaders of the orphanage who had “a cross around their neck and a Bible in their hand,” driving him away from Christianity. Later in life but before Zito’s birth, Zito’s father “met Jesus in a radical way.” His father separated his experience of the church with his belief in Jesus, which influenced Zito’s own preaching.
“I’m not a huge believer in the building of a church,” Zito said. “We’re supposed to take Christ out, you know, to the people.”
Pamela Bolton, hailing from Whitehall, New York who preaches at a church nearby, organized Zito’s preaching visits to Vermont and showed him Bhakta’s donation plans. Bolton said she and Zito share an interest in regional religious revivals and think a fully accredited Christian university on the New York border in Vermont will benefit New England.
Vermont used to be a very religious state, evident in the many church steeples in municipalities around the state, Zito said. Now it consistently ranks among the least religious states in the country, so Zito said he can make a larger impact by spreading his message in Vermont.
“I just think it would be a wonderful thing for this area, and I believe that there would be many people who would be very supportive of this,” Bolton said.
Early on in his preaching career, Zito said he helped Dr. Rodney Howard-Browne with the River Bible Institute, a school in Tampa, Florida in 1997. Browne, Zito’s mentor, made headlines in 2020 when he was arrested for holding church services during the COVID-19 pandemic, and subsequently prompted Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis to exempt church gatherings from the state’s stay-at-home order. Zito was holding in-person church services as well, just with a lower profile, and he said he supports Browne despite not being affiliated with the preacher currently.
Zito also started a religious school called Zoe Bible College in Florida in the 2010s, which is no longer in operation. Zito said he has learned that running a school requires more hands-on leadership and higher tuition to cover costs.
He filed for bankruptcy for his organization Tommie Zito Ministries in 2010, and the Internal Revenue Services revoked the 501(c) 3 status of Zito’s nonprofit the American Awakening Inc. in 2025, according to a federal database.
‘Really big dreams’
Some are skeptical of the scale of Zito’s plans though, as he leaves a trail of failed ventures in his wake in Florida.
Given his past track record, James Johnson, Poultney business owner of Analog Cycles, said he doubts that Zito has the finances or fundraising ability to get the university off the ground.
“It’s hard to start a school from scratch, much less an evangelical school in the middle of nowhere,” Johnson said. “I think it’s just going to collapse under its own weight very rapidly.”
Rebecca Cook, the Poultney Public Library’s director, said that there has been a lot of build up for what appears to be premature plans, but she’s waiting to see how things unfold. Cook and Johnson both said that Poultney has invested in recreation to bolster the local economy despite the empty college at the end of its downtown corridor.
“It seems like a lot of really big dreams without necessarily having the building blocks in place,” Cook said. “I think at this point, I’m just not sure anybody’s going to do anything down there because nothing ever seems to quite materialize.”
Zito said that these financial concerns are “all being worked out for good” with lawyers, and he will answer further press questions when he returns to Vermont in November after he plans to acquire the campus.
“Leadership is learned, right, learned through a lot of trials and errors and mistakes, and having the right people involved is an important part of any organization,” Zito said. “Normally, you know, there’s a lot of failure before there’s success.”
Now he recognizes that he is not trained to run a university and said he is working on recruiting qualified people and delegating leadership roles. He said he is early on in soliciting donations, but acknowledges that the necessary improvements and renovations will require significant funding. Bhakta’s donation website stated the college would require $1 million to operate annually on top of the estimated $500 million in deferred maintenance.
Zito said he offered the first donation to his project. Zito said he previously received a salary of $100,000 per year for the next 10 years from an undisclosed benefactor for his preaching, and decided to put that toward the college.
“Leaders have to lead, and it allows me to stand in front of people that have millions of dollars and say, you know what? I had nothing. Somebody gave me this, and I’m putting it into the gospel,” Zito said.
Where does Zito go from here?
Zito has to jump through many hoops before his dream for Z University can become a reality.
He said he is working through the process for zoning and addressing the previous alleged Act 250 violations.
“We’re planning on doing everything proper,” Zito said. “We are team players. There’s rules for a reason.”
Zito’s team has reached out to discuss permitting obligations, Peter Gill, executive director of the state’s Land Use Review Board, wrote in a Monday email.
“Responsibility to resolve or remediate an alleged violation of an Act 250 permit runs with the land and passes to the current owner,” Gill wrote.
Zito also is looking into accreditation, either with the New England Commission of Higher Education or with a Christian school accreditation entity.
While Zito plans for an August 2027 opening of Z University, an “application for accreditation is a long process, extending over many years, with no guarantee of success,” the New England Commission of Higher Education President Lawrence Schall wrote in an email to VTDigger Monday.
Zito said has met with the town of Poultney to cultivate a better relationship going forward, and hopes to bring foot traffic to town businesses and open the campus up to residents as well. “Our university is Poultney’s University,” he added. “I’m an evangelist. I want people on this campus.”
Poultney Town Manager Paul Donaldson wrote in a Tuesday email that he urged Zito to seek Vermont-based counsel with knowledge of the “legal and permitting climate of the State” at the meeting last week.
“He has very ambitious plans for the campus, and the Town looks forward to supporting his efforts to have a successful launch of his endeavors,” Donaldson wrote in the email.
