For 80 years, the Wisconsin Alumni Association has honored exceptional alumni with Distinguished Alumni Awards. Early recipients include actor Fredric March ’20 of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde fame and Helen C. White PhD’24, the beloved English professor whose name now graces College Library. More recently, alumni such as Earth Day founder Gaylord Nelson LLB’42, scientist Carl Djerassi PhD’45, and fashion icon Iris Apfel ’43 have joined their ranks. We imagine they’d be as proud as we are to welcome this year’s honorees into the fold.
Learn more about the award winners. The deadline for 2017 Distinguished Alumni Award nominations is December 16.
John Daniels Jr. was the first African American lawyer in the United States to start as an associate in a major law firm and become chair.
John Daniels Jr. MS’72
John Daniels Jr. is chair emeritus at the national law firm Quarles & Brady. As chair, he grew the law firm significantly during the worst downturn since the Great Depression. A nationally recognized expert in real estate and business law, he has been involved in some of the nation’s most complex real estate redevelopment projects. He is the former national president of the American College of Real Estate Lawyers and has represented major corporations such as General Electric, Kraft Foods, and Xerox.
After earning his MS in education, Daniels received his JD from Harvard University. Over the years, he has been a major force for civic good in Milwaukee. He has worked as lead lawyer on many signature downtown projects. He also helped organize an annual golf tournament, the Fellowship Open, that raises money to support children in need, and he has worked with his brother, a Milwaukee clergyman, on a number of community housing and education projects.
Judith Faulkner, who earned her MS in computer sciences, serves on the department’s board of visitors, and the company she founded, Epic Systems, has endowed three computer sciences faculty positions.
Judith Greenfield Faulkner MS’67
Judith Faulkner is the founder and CEO of Epic Systems, which she launched in 1979 in an apartment-house basement. Epic has since grown to become a leading provider of integrated health care software, with clients that include the Cleveland Clinic, Johns Hopkins, Cedars-Sinai, Kaiser Permanente, CVS Health, and Walgreens. More than half of the U.S. population has medical information in an Epic system. Faulkner has kept the company privately held and has built a sustainable corporate campus in Verona, Wisconsin, with 9,900 employees.
In 2013, Forbes magazine called her the “most powerful woman in health care.” Faulkner has pledged to donate 99 percent of her assets to philanthropy. UW–Madison awarded her an honorary doctorate in 2010, and she is a member of the National Academy of Medicine’s Leadership Roundtable. She also served on the Health Information Technology Policy Committee, a federal advisory group that helps to shape IT-related health care policy, and its Privacy and Security subcommittee.
Doris Weisberg serves on the Memorial Union Building Association and is helping to position the Wisconsin Union to use locally grown products in its food-service operations.
Doris Feldman Weisberg ’58
Doris Feldman Weisberg was part of the team that launched the Food Network, where she produced numerous shows and was the managing editor of food news. She has also produced cooking shows for Lifetime Television. Prior to that, she was on the faculty of City College of the City University of New York, where she taught for 26 years. She was director of the Speech and Hearing Center and retired in 1992 as chair of the speech department.
Weisberg earned her bachelor’s degree in psychology and went on to receive her MS and PhD from Columbia University. She serves on the political science department’s board of visitors, and she is also on the board of the Wisconsin Foundation and Alumni Association and is a member of its Women’s Philanthropy Council. She and her husband have created a planned gift to establish the Doris Feldman Weisberg and Robert Weisberg Center for Progressive Political Thought. They also established the Doris and Robert Weisberg Current Issues Symposium Fund at the Memorial Union to bring relevant and timely speakers to campus.
Published in the Winter 2016 issue
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