Frautschi has enriched the lives of countless Madison residents and UW–Madison students.

Jerome “Jerry” Frautschi ’56, who died in January, was a giant in a family of giants in terms of contributions to the UW and its surrounding community. After serving in the Navy during the Korean War, Frautschi returned to Madison and joined the family’s printing business, Webcrafters, which he ran alongside his brother, John Frautschi, for 42 years. Jerry’s father, Walter Frautschi 1924, had been prominent in UW and civic concerns, serving as president of the Wisconsin Alumni Association and as a leader for the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation (WARF) for decades.

Jerry followed in his footsteps. Among Jerry’s many gifts to the campus community, one of the most cherished is Frautschi Point — formerly Second Point on Lake Mendota — which he and John donated to the UW in the late 1980s. This 17-acre parcel, with 1,600 feet of shoreline, was preserved in its natural state, extending the Lakeshore Path and protecting a vital piece of Madison’s landscape. In recent years, Jerry gave nearly $17 million to the UW–Madison Lakeshore Nature Preserve to build the Frautschi Center, a visitor building at the entrance to Picnic Point. Construction is slated to begin later this year.

“Thanks to his vision and foresight, tens of thousands of Badgers and Madisonians have enjoyed the beauty of the iconic Lakeshore Nature Preserve, Picnic Point, and Frautschi Point,” says UW–Madison chancellor Jennifer Mnookin. “Many more will soon experience the Frautschi Center when it opens as a brand-new front door to these cherished spaces.”

Jerry Frautschi’s most transformative contribution came in 1998, when he gave a landmark $205 million to build Madison’s Overture Center for the Arts. Designed by renowned architect César Pelli, the Overture Center spans an entire city block and includes a 2,100-seat concert hall, a restored 1927 theater, a theater-in-the-round, and the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art (see “State Street, That Great Street”).

Frautschi continued to invest in the UW’s future. A generous contribution helped create Alumni Park, which opened in fall 2017. This celebratory space shares the story of what it means to be a Badger through inspiring sculptures, inscriptions, statues, and a striking fountain. He was also an avid supporter of the Hamel Music Center, which opened in 2019.

Frautschi was joined in his philanthropy by his wife, Pleasant Rowland, founder of the American Girl brand. Their vision has left an indelible mark on Madison, enriching the lives of countless residents, students, and visitors.

Spelsberg’s most notable moment occurred in Season 49, when one of the contestants was bitten by a poisonous snake. Courtesy of Sarah Spelsberg

As a UW–Madison undergrad, Sarah Spelsberg ’95 — a psychology major who’d been told by an adviser that she’d never get into medical school — began to feel a deep pull toward the magic of the wild. After graduating, she moved to Telluride, Colorado, where she planned to work for one year in a ski lodge.

Instead, Spelsberg joined the local search-and-rescue team, and her one-year mountain adventure turned into nearly a decade of tracking down missing people and rescuing them from swift-water accidents, avalanches, rockslides, and much more.

Spelsberg eventually earned a master’s degree and became an orthopedic surgery physician assistant at the Mayo Clinic in Jacksonville, Florida. She then traveled to Alaska’s remote Aleutian Islands to work in emergency medicine before returning to medical school and an emergency medicine residency at UNC Health Southeastern. Now, she’s the director of U.S. operations for World Extreme Medicine, which trains health professionals to work in challenging environments. Patients include wilderness adventurers, explorers in hostile climates, and victims of war and natural disasters.

But the highlight of her career came last year when she served as a physician for Seasons 49 and 50 of the TV show Survivor. Spelsberg had actually been invited to be a contestant on the first season of the show but ultimately decided against it. However, she loved every minute of her behind-the-scenes role as a health care provider.

“It was really fun to work with people who are at the top of their game and aren’t afraid to adapt in remote areas,” she says. “Everyone there had a can-do attitude. If every corporation, hospital, city, and country ran the way they run themselves, the world would be a better place.” Spelsberg describes longtime host Jeff Probst as “one of the nicest people I’ve ever met.”

She spent a lot of her time helping to care for the production crew, which encompassed more than 800 people. “It takes a lot of people to pull together a production of that caliber,” she explains. Perhaps the most notable moment occurred in Season 49, when one of the contestants was bitten by a banded sea krait, a snake with venom that can render one bite fatal. Fortunately, it turned out to be a “dry bite,” which does not include venom.

Spelsberg would go back to Fiji in a heartbeat. “If there’s something you want to do, find a way to do it,” she advises. “Don’t ever feel stagnant. Don’t feel like a caged lion in your life or career. It is never too late to achieve your dreams.”

Miller: “I knew I wanted to finish in Madison, because it’s such a special place for me.” Courtesy of Todd Miller

When Todd Miller ’83 crossed the finish line at the Midwest Financial Group Madison Mini Marathon in August, it was the end of a 12-year quest to run a half or full marathon in all 50 states. The Madison finale was fitting for Miller, a hardcore Badger who currently lives in Chevy Chase, Maryland.

A lifelong athlete, Miller wasn’t always a serious runner. “In my early 50s, I joined an early morning exercise boot camp,” he says. “It was a fitness community with other runners, and they were very encouraging.”

After completing marathons in Washington, DC, and Philadelphia in 2013, it was off to the races with 49 to go. The pace was grueling. “You’re either getting ready to run, running, or recovering from running,” Miller says. The feeling of accomplishment was powerful, but pounding that much pavement also gave him a sense of “the slow destruction” of his body.

Muscle soreness aside, every race had memorable moments. While running with his brother and fellow Green Bay Packers fan, Jamie Miller ’86, the pair outran former Packer quarterback Brett Favre in a Mississippi race near Favre’s hometown. And locals were generally supportive. After a Waffle House bathroom stop during the same race, Miller received a round of applause from diners.

Miller almost missed the Newport (Rhode Island) Half Marathon after locking his keys in a rental car. “I tried to break the car window with a metal rod outside my inn near Newport,” he recalls. “Miraculously, after about 20 minutes, a young couple came out from the inn, and I asked them if I could have a ride to the starting line. The guy said, ‘Sure, but can you put down that rod?’ They were definitely weirded out.”

Miller spent more than 15 years in management at Fannie Mae before joining the cryptocurrency industry. He currently serves as managing director of Phlomis Finance, a global advisory company focused on digital assets and blockchain technologies.

Juggling a busy career with planning and logistics for each run was complicated, but one decision was a no-brainer. “I knew I wanted to finish in Madison, because it’s such a special place for me,” he says.

Running by Bascom Hill as a 64-year-old triggered a flashback to Miller’s first day of classes. “It was a warm September day in 1979 when I walked up Bascom and saw the pink flamingos set up by Leon Varjian x’83 and his Pail and Shovel [student government] party. I knew I had picked the right college!”

Shirley Krsinich MS’76, one of WAA’s most frequent travelers, has signed up for 20 trips. Krsinich says that one big draw for her is the friendliness of Wisconsin travelers.

“I have traveled with my husband, with my friends, and with my nieces, and all were warmly welcomed. And I have traveled by myself, and I was warmly welcomed and felt included, which can be a fear for many first-time single travelers. I’ve always appreciated my fellow Badgers for being so hospitable.”

Madison physician Christopher Harkin ’84, MD’89, who took the Egypt and the Eternal Nile trip with his wife, Jacquelynn Arbuckle ’91, MD’95, says their trip was “so much better than we could’ve imagined. The educational value was just a much higher level than any other professional tour because our group was educated at the University of Wisconsin. … We are always going to take our future tours through WAA.”

Some of the program’s most popular trips include European river cruises, with a Dutch water-ways tour to Holland and Belgium during tulip season taking first place.

Other favorites are ocean cruises to ports of call such as Alaska, Australia, New Zealand, and the Mediterranean. Popular land options include African safaris, Italy, Japan, and Iceland. Every other year, adventures in Antarctica, Southeast Asia, and the Galápagos Islands are on offer.

Although the COVID-19 pandemic forced the cancellation of all trips in 2020 and many in 2021, travel director Amy Klus ’05 says the program quickly bounced back in 2022, with the only difference being that more travelers now opt for travel insurance.

According to Chief Alumni Officer and Executive Director Sarah Schutt, “The WAA travel program plays an important role in our efforts to connect alumni and friends. For more than 60 years, alumni have shared memorable moments around the world and have created lasting friendships by traveling with other Badgers. The wonders of travel are taken to a higher level in the company of those with whom you share a special UW bond.”

As a first-generation college student from a working-class family, Cauley learned to think critically on the Madison campus. Mindy Tucker

Kashana Cauley ’02 majored in economics and political science at UW–Madison and graduated from Columbia law school, but she credits X (formerly Twitter) with the education that forged her career. Unhappy with the hours and stress of practicing antitrust law for a Manhattan firm, Cauley started writing jokes on the social media platform. She kept tinkering with her style until she found her now-characteristic acerbic wit. “It was a good medium,” Cauley says. “You had to be short and punchy— say something funny in just 140 characters — and you could see what worked live and what didn’t.”

X also delivered her unexpected career break. After putting her jokes out there and writing an essay for the Atlantic about how becoming a mom converted her from an early anti-vaxxer stance, she received a message asking her to write for The Daily Show with Trevor Noah.

“It was a Saturday at 3 a.m. — it was so obviously fake,” she said of her initial reaction. But the offer turned out to be real. That led to the fulfillment of her childhood dreams to be a writer and to do comedy. She’s followed that up writing for The Great North and Pod Save America. She’s also written for the New York Times, Esquire, the New Yorker, and Rolling Stone, among other publications. Now she’s writing novels.

Her debut, The Survivalists — a dark comedy about a young Black lawyer risking her career and conscience to move in with her doomsday-prepper boyfriend — made multiple best-of-2023 lists, including Marie Claire’s and Ms. magazine’s.

This past summer, she published The Payback, described by the New York Times as “a novel that takes on our absurd, predatory student loan system with a zany sense of humor.”

Cauley jokes that she was able to draw upon her personal experience with higher education in writing about student loans. “The UW was responsible for making some of that debt possible.”

Seriously, though, she says she’s indebted to the university for more than student loans. As a first-generation college student from a working-class family, Cauley learned to think critically on the Madison campus. “It made me the thinker I am today,” she says.

Cauley is at work on another novel and says she’d welcome the chance to write for TV again, employing her characteristic biting satire to address the systemic injustices that trouble her. “You can lecture people,” she says, “but if you put jokes in there, they’ll be laughing and maybe realize they have learned something, too.”

Crowfoot: “The idea that we can use government to improve society — that’s at the core of everything I do.” Courtesy of California Natural Resources Agency

Wade Crowfoot 96’s passion for natural spaces started on the banks of Loon Lake in Ontario, Canada, when he was a boy. There, at his family’s cabin, he’d pick blueberries and fish for bass, perch, and catfish.

More than three decades later, Crowfoot’s love of the outdoors extends 2,500 miles west to California, where in 2019, Governor Gavin Newsom appointed him secretary of natural resources.

In that cabinet-level role, Crowfoot manages 25,000 employees who steward state forests, natural lands, and waterways. He also advises Newsom on natural resources and the environment.

For Crowfoot, defending public lands isn’t just an environmental issue — it’s a democratic one. “These are lands that you can enjoy whether you’re rich or poor, regardless of your background,” he says. “Public lands are uniquely American. They are our heritage.”

Additionally, under Crowfoot’s leadership, California has become a national model for tribal partnerships. (Crowfoot’s English surname is often mistaken as Native American.) More than 100,000 acres of ancestral land have been returned to Native communities, and more than half of the state’s park land acreage is now comanaged with tribal nations.

At UW–Madison, Crowfoot majored in political science and quickly immersed himself in state government. He found a mentor in Dennis Dresang ’64, professor emeritus of public affairs and political science. The mentorship led to a page position at the state capitol, and eventually to an honors project on public-private partnerships.

Crowfoot’s turning point came during his sophomore year, when he and a friend took a semester off to drive across the country in a Volkswagen van. They camped their way through the national parks and ultimately arrived in the Bay Area. En route, Crowfoot was enchanted by the starkness of the eastern Sierra Nevada and the sublimity of Big Sur’s precipitous coastal cliffs. After studying abroad in Costa Rica, he returned to Madison to finish his degree, and then he moved west.

Crowfoot has witnessed how Californians across the political spectrum rally around wild spaces: “They’re a connector in a time of great political division.” Despite growing environmental threats — and political opposition in some quarters — Crowfoot remains relentlessly hopeful. His work is animated by a belief in the Progressive tradition, one he traces back to Wisconsin’s political history. “The idea that we can use government to improve society — that’s at the core of everything I do.”

The van Meurers want to to give back to people who otherwise would not have the opportunity to go to UW–Madison. Madison Bess

An alumni couple in their early 30s are one of the youngest ever to create an estate plan benefiting UW–Madison.

Grace ’16 and Michael van Meurer ’15 ran cross country and track as students, but they didn’t meet until they attended an end-of-season party and both arrived on time to find they were the first ones there. They joke that they still pride themselves on punctuality.

Perhaps that’s why they are thinking ahead with estate planning. “It comes down to it’s such an easy thing to do,” says Michael. “It’s also something I don’t have to think about for a very long time. It’s a really easy way to make a lasting legacy at Wisconsin.”

Grace adds, “We don’t have ties to a church or many other organizations, and Wisconsin really is where our lives kind of took off. We owe our education and our careers to Wisconsin, and we also met each other there. It’s extra special to us.”

The plan calls for the couple to give $1 million to the UW upon their deaths.

Michael believes that younger alums might think that an estate plan is beyond their reach. But, he says, “this is the time in many young people’s lives when they’re thinking about starting a family and protecting them, but you can very easily leverage your life insurance coverage for the things that you care about outside of your immediate family.” Life insurance forms a portion of the van Meurers’ plan.

Michael is in technical sales with Snowflake, a cloud-based data-storage company, and Grace is an art director for Alloy Marketing. On the side, they also run Studio van M, a graphic design company focused on the interior design and luxury hospitality industry. The business takes its name from a combination of their last names — in 2017, Michael Van Voorhis and Grace Meurer legally changed their surnames to combine the two.

They have decided to direct their planned gift toward endowed scholarships that they set up this year, with one for each of their respective majors — engineering for Michael and art for Grace. Grace says that an art degree might be especially hard to justify for students with financial need, but that a scholarship can make it possible.

“A big part of it is wanting to give back to people who otherwise would not have the opportunity to even go to Wisconsin,” says Michael.

Marker doesn’t think Garbage would have been as “creative or cool or interesting” without the UW’s influence. Levi Tecofsky

Steve Marker ’89 learned an important life lesson while attending UW–Madison: “It really taught me to stick up for myself when it came to what I wanted,” he says. “To not just go with the flow and do the prescribed route.”

That lesson led to decades-long success not only for Marker as a musician, record producer, and engineer, but also for his band Garbage. The band — also featuring Butch Vig ’80, Shirley Manson, and Duke Erikson — released its eighth album, Let All That We Imagine Be the Light, and is celebrating the 30th anniversary of its self-titled debut.

Marker met Vig and Erikson while living in Madison, as a fan and eventually the sound engineer for their band Spooner. He also “lurked” with Vig in the basement of the Humanities Building, “trying to get access to all those cool synthesizers they had down there.”

Marker later created a home studio in his basement that featured his four-track reel-to-reel deck and Vig’s microphones.

In 1983, Marker and Vig launched Smart Studios, which soon became a haven for bands looking for a place to record. Marker has produced and/or engineered music by Killdozer, Gumball, Robert Plant, The Weeds, The Heart Throbs, Pop Will Eat Itself, Tar Babies, Poop- shovel, L7, and many more. Vig went on to work with national record label Sub Pop and produced bands such as Nirvana.

Marker admits that the widespread attention they received surprised him. He didn’t think that “these first punk-rock records we were making on East Washington for a few hundred bucks” would lead to them getting global airplay. “All of a sudden, we started making these records that were getting played in London and Australia,” he says.

In the early ’90s, Marker, Vig, and Erikson got the itch to start a band. They brought in Manson as lead singer and formed Garbage. Marker says it was refreshing to create a “different and interesting” pop sound with strong female vocals after working mostly with male vocalists and harder rock music. The band got its name when a friend commented that a remix that was still in its rough stages sounded like garbage. “So we thought we’d call ourselves that, which seemed like a good idea at the time,” says Marker.

He doesn’t think Garbage would have been as “creative or cool or interesting” without the UW’s influence. “There’s a bit of an underdog, us-against-them mentality that you get from living in the Midwest more than you might on the coast,” he says. “That has stuck with us and kept us going.”

At UW–Madison, Murphy “learned to work together in groups instead of always trying to outshine someone else.” Courtesy of Jacob Funk

Growing up in Sun Prairie, Wisconsin, in a family of rabid sports fans, Karen Murphy ’93 cheered for the Badgers and Packers.

Today, she still cheers for the Badgers. The Packers? Not since 1999, when Murphy was hired as a controller by the Chicago Bears.

“It was an interesting transition,” she says. In October 2000, Murphy followed the Bears to a game at Lambeau Field.

“I realized I was truly cheering for the Bears,” she says, chuckling. “I knew I had fully converted.”

In the ensuing 25 years, Murphy has become one of the Bears’ top executives, currently serving as executive vice president of stadium development and chief operating officer.

When she attended UW–Madison, Murphy’s dad, an accountant, suggested she should consider the field.

“I took a couple of classes, and they went really well,” she says. “Everyone else hated them. I thought, ‘This is probably what I should do.’ ”

Murphy liked the “work hard, play hard” vibe on campus, and she found the UW to be “a very collaborative school. I learned to work together in groups instead of always trying to outshine someone else.”

After a stint with Ernst and Young in Chicago, in 1997 she went to work for the Walt Disney Company, which had recently acquired the Anaheim Angels baseball team. Murphy worked on the Angels account, sitting in an office, as it happened, adjacent to another UW grad, Rick Schlesinger ’83.

“He’s now the president of the Milwaukee Brewers,” she says. “I remember talking to him about Madison and getting a real understanding of what it meant to work for a sports team.”

Murphy realized she wanted to work for an athletic franchise full-time, so she sent résumés to 70 teams. The Bears had an opening, and she had friends there from her earlier time in the city. It was a good fit.

Murphy then worked her way up the ladder, often finding herself the only female in the room at meetings.

“I was the only woman in leadership until around 2016,” she says, noting she had to create a maternity leave policy. “But I relished that.” She knew sports, and at the same time, she was able to offer a different perspective.

Murphy began her current role in 2024. Getting a new Bears stadium built — most likely in suburban Arlington Heights — is a daunting challenge, but she relishes that, too.

Meanwhile, Murphy has a son enrolling at UW–Madison this fall. Luckily, she can still cheer for the Badgers.

Higginbottom: “The support that you would get from the alums and the people you interacted with at the university was very strong. I think that it is one of the things that helped me succeed in my career.” Ilana Bar-Av

Elzie Higginbottom ’65 ran his way to the UW, and then he ran his way into the university’s record books. After he completed his degree, he kept right on running, straight up the corporate ladder to a position as one of Illinois’s leading real estate executives.

Higginbottom grew up in Chicago Heights, just a few miles south of the heart of Chicago. He was athletic, which helped him land a track scholarship at the UW, where he ran the 440-yard dash and anchored the Badgers’ mile-relay team. A four-year star, Higginbottom won the Big Ten championship in the indoor mile race in 1963, and he was an all-American in the 440. In 1963, he set the UW school record in that race, with a time of 46 seconds — a record that held until 1983.

But in the classroom, he was attracted to real estate. Inspired by his grandparents’ farm, he studied agricultural economics, and in the summer, he worked for Baird & Warner, a Chicago real estate firm. The summer job led to a full-time position after graduation. He developed an expertise in finance and helped lead Baird & Warner’s effort to create a division that focused on government-assisted housing.

“At that time, it was a growing area,” he says, “but keep in mind that this was 1965, and I was the first African American hired at Baird & Warner. The opportunity at that time for Blacks was not exactly the same as it is today. The fact that I was doing government-assisted housing removed some of the barriers that I would have faced had I been trying to focus on conventionally financed housing.”

Higginbottom helped Black families get homes in neighborhoods that had previously been all white. The work wasn’t always easy, and he frequently ran up against prejudice. But he credits his Badger network with helping him overcome obstacles.

“The support that you would get from the alums and the people you interacted with at the university was very strong,” he says. “I think that it is one of the things that helped me succeed in my career.”

After 18 years with Baird & Warner, Higginbottom decided to launch his own firm, East Lake Management, which has since grown to be one of Illinois’s largest real-estate development companies.

He continues to maintain close ties with his alma mater. Three of his four kids went to UW–Madison, and he’s frequently supported scholarships — including the Chancellor’s Scholarship Program — that aid students from underrepresented backgrounds.

“I had such a good experience in the university,” he says. “I felt that it would be important if more Black students had an opportunity to experience Wisconsin. I always found the faculty as well as the students at Wisconsin very inviting.”