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.”

To the DeWolfs, UW–Madison is like “a big family.” Left to right: Chris, Suzy, Riley, Lindsay, and Weston. Karen Zazza

Suzy Oldorf DeWolf ’94 and her husband, Chris, know a thing or two about loyalty and commitment. They met in preschool, dated throughout their teens, and attended different colleges before tying the knot in 1995. The two are co-owners of Lil’ Drug Store Products, a second-generation, family-owned business that is the leading supplier of over-the-counter medicines to convenience stores, travel hubs, hospitality providers, and other alternative retail outlets. They also own ForeFold Ventures, a family office focused on private investment and philanthropy. They have long been active in supporting causes in their home community of Cedar Rapids, Iowa.

Already supporters of higher education, the couple decided several years ago that they wanted to extend their reach beyond the state of Iowa. They contacted the UW to see how they might plug in. Together with university administrators, they created a new study-abroad program for first-year students and funded scholarships for the Global Launch program. Then, they expanded their giving to the School of Human Ecology, UW athletics, and the Wisconsin School of Business. Their daughter Lindsay DeWolf ’24 is a School of Business graduate, and their son, Weston DeWolf x’26, will graduate from the school next spring. Their other daughter, Riley Nassif, graduated from the University of Iowa.

Suzy says that within the last decade, the couple decided to make a more conscious effort to enjoy the impact of their giving during their lifetime. They chose to add UW–Madison to their extensive giving portfolio because “Wisconsin is a highly regarded institution, and we want to continue that legacy,” Suzy says. “It’s a great place, and people naturally want to be a part of it. It’s like a big family.” In addition, she says, the university “gave me a great foundation, and having two kids go there is extra special.”

Both Suzy’s and Chris’s parents led by example, giving to their churches and other causes in their community, “but we’ve definitely taken it to another level,” Suzy says. The two were deliberate in instilling the habit of giving in their own children at an early age. And now, as young adults, the DeWolf children have become even more involved. Prior to starting a family foundation, the DeWolfs used their local community foundation as a vehicle to make donations, and the children have been charged with directing gifts from the family’s endowed fund. Lindsay and Weston also participate in Day of the Badger giving each year.

“We’re learning together,” Suzy says. “It brings us joy. It’s fun, and it keeps us connected as a family.”

Clark is the only UW–Madison alum who’s also a currently serving general officer in the U.S. Air Force. Courtesy of Andrew Clark

For most people, a one-star review is no cause for excitement, but then the cadets in the UW’s Air Force ROTC program aren’t most people. They loved their one-star review, because that star belonged to Brigadier General Andrew Clark ’95, the only UW–Madison alum who’s also a currently serving general officer in the U.S. Air Force. When Clark returned to campus to review the program, and to offer mentoring and insight to its students, they were thrilled to turn out.

Clark came back to campus in October 2024 as part of the Air Force’s Mentorship Matters program, in which general officers visit ROTC programs to connect with young officers-to-be. “[The Air Force] pays you to come back twice a year, meet with the cadets, talk to them, share experiences,” Clark says. And he had a great deal to share, in addition to the prestige of his rank. He is one of the few pilots ever to fly a U2 spy plane — one of the most difficult aircraft in the U.S. fleet. It flies at about 70,000 feet, capturing photos of foreign countries.

“More people have Super Bowl rings than have flown a U2,” he says.

After his U2 days were over, Clark continued in a role in aerial reconnaissance and intelligence. In 2024, he was serving as the commanding officer of a NATO air base in Sicily, one that was responsible for keeping an eye on NATO’s eastern borders, including Russia.

“We started receiving aircraft in 2019, went to initial operating capacity in 2021, and then with the invasion of Ukraine in 2022, we started operating at a much higher level,” he says.

The 2024 campus visit was Clark’s first involvement with Mentorship Matters, and he found interacting with the students sharpened his focus as they looked to learn what a cadet needs to do to earn a pilot’s wings or a general’s stars.

“They asked good questions,” he says. “The first was, ‘What’s your why?’ For me, the service is the reward — serving a cause higher than myself. And at the higher level, as a brigadier general, it’s the ability to take care of people and effect changes that will make their lives and quality of service better. Taking care of people is intensely rewarding.”

“I was motivated to make some change, so much so I could barely sleep,” says Walada, founder of the Africa Forward Initiative. Bryce Richter

Hezouwe Walada ’23 had his sights set on being a cardiologist, but he made an important pit stop soon after he graduated from UW–Madison: to lift up the entrepreneurial spirit and improve the lives of the less fortunate in Africa.

Born in Togo, Walada is the executive director and founder of the Africa Forward Initiative (AFI), which is devoted to giving Africans the resources they need to lead better lives, whether they’re founders of a start-up or villagers seeking help to build a new well.

“Food insecurity, lack of access to clean water, educating the youth with proper schools — these are all issues we seek to address,” says Walada.

AFI projects work by giving African entrepreneurs microloans, sometimes as low as $80, to help them with the next phase of their business. These applicants come from a large swath of African countries, from Togo to the Ivory Coast to Sierra Leone.

A low interest rate ensures the entrepreneur isn’t burdened with heavy fees, but it also serves a dual purpose: interest payments fund, for example, youth projects related to farming or wells in underserved communities.

Another widespread community solution, School for All, provides vulnerable children with school supplies and assists struggling families with the cost of education fees.

“I knew I wanted to be a doctor to help fix some issues in Africa, but I had to go deeper than that,” says Walada, who credits the UW’s Odyssey Project for supporting him during his freshman year at the university.

Long before he set foot on U.S. soil, Walada saw firsthand how he could make a difference. When his village in Togo was decimated by a bout of malaria, he was driven to work in the health care system. “I was motivated to make some change, so much so I could barely sleep,” he recalls.

During his time at the UW, he was inspired by many mentors. “I’m fulfilled to have so many people help me at school and give me the opportunity to do what I do now,” Walada says.

Up next for Walada is a summer trip to the African countries where the Africa Forward Initiative operates. He also intends to take his MCAT at some point in 2026.

“I want to work with the heart,” says Walada of his cardiovascular ambitions, “because I’ve always been fascinated by how this small engine in our body is so important to all our functions.”

Campbell developed the drug ivermectin to fight heartworm. It also prevented river blindness, saving millions of people from losing their eyesight. Alexander Mahmoud

William Campbell MS’54, PhD’57 never meant to come to Wisconsin. In fact, much of his life seemed unintended — he hadn’t really meant to study parasites, to work in tropical illness, to seek cures for people’s ailments. But by luck and happenstance, he did all those things — and ended up discovering the drug ivermectin and winning a Nobel Prize.

“It happened by chance,” he says, “and throughout my life, I’ve been impressed as to the role of chance in the big moves in our lives.”

Campbell grew up in Ireland, and as a high school student, he went to an agricultural show and tucked a brochure on animal illnesses in his pocket. Years later, while at Trinity College in Dublin, he was thinking that maybe he should study medicine when a teacher made him think of that brochure again.

“The professor, Desmond Smith, was a parasite guy,” Campbell says. “It immediately crystallized or focused my interest. I often think how lucky a student can be when you encounter a professor who changes your life. I had originally come to study medicine, but because of him, at the last minute, I changed my mind and switched to natural science and studied parasitology and never stopped.”

Chance intervened again after Campbell finished his bachelor’s degree. A parasitologist at the UW was looking for likely graduate students. Campbell, not sure what else to do, crossed the Atlantic. He earned his master’s and doctorate, and he went to work in drug development for the pharmaceutical firm Merck. The work was always interesting but seldom fruitful. “In that business, you discover drugs all the time,” he says. “You realize that the chances are that it’s going to be exciting today, but it’s going to totally fall apart tomorrow. It’s going to be useless. It’s going to be unstable or toxic or stinky or whatever.”

But not all of his discoveries fell apart. When he and his fellow scientists were looking for a treatment for heartworm in cattle, they developed a drug called ivermectin. It not only proved effective, but later it found an even more exciting use: it could attack the parasites that cause onchocerciasis — river blindness — in humans.

Before the 1980s, some 40 million people were infected with onchocerciasis; as many as 600,000 of them ended up blind. Ivermectin destroyed the filarial worm that caused the disease. With Campbell’s urging, Merck donated the drug to developing countries. About 25 million people are now treated with it each year. The drug proved so successful that in 2015, Campbell and Satoshi Ōmura shared the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for discovering it.

“Teamwork was the thing,” Campbell says. “Nowadays it is common for science to advance through teamwork. When it happens, each one is indebted to all the others.”