Considered essential staff under COVID-19, UW custodian Mailo Thor mops a hallway in the WARF building. Jeff Miller

Due to the pandemic, many companies have been forced to transition their employees to working remotely. And some workplaces have already made the decision to continue doing so even after the pandemic is over, according to Jirs Meuris, a professor in UW–Madison’s Department of Management and Human Resources at the Wisconsin School of Business.

“Probably for certain jobs it works well, but for others, that is not necessarily the case,” he says.

A main advantage to remote working for companies is the cost savings, because employers don’t need to rent or purchase as much office space or pay for utilities and other building maintenance costs. Meuris adds that the ability to work remotely can also be seen as a benefit for staff who desire to work from home.

A downside for employees, though, is that “it’s much harder to set boundaries with your work and home life.” There is the temptation to answer work emails or complete other tasks during evenings or weekends, he says, and this can lead to burnout or work–family conflicts. A second drawback, he adds, is that a lot of innovation and problem-solving “happens through small conversations that people have” when they run into each other throughout the course of the day, “so you have a lot less of that.”

Whether businesses end up bringing their employees back to the office or not, Meuris says, it’s going to take a while for things to feel normal and for organizations to recuperate from the disruption caused by the pandemic.

What, then, was the first thing you wanted to major in when you got to UW–Madison? Some students choose the UW for a specific field of study and, four years later, graduate with a degree in that field. Others come in with an idea for a major but fall in love with a different program after exploring some of the UW’s 9,000-plus courses. And others arrive on campus with absolutely no idea where to concentrate their studies.

It’s difficult to imagine college without majors, but back in 1848, when the University of Wisconsin was founded, students all took general classes in impor-tant, timeless subjects such as Latin and penmanship. It wasn’t until later, around the late 1800s, that the first semblance of “majors” appeared. Students could now choose to concentrate in various “courses” of study, including chemistry, music, and agriculture.

Now, 150-some years after the first course of study was introduced at the UW, the university boasts 232 undergraduate majors and certificates. Part of the value in attending an institution like UW–Madison is the opportunity to explore and to learn — to gain not just specific career skills, but also knowledge about yourself and how to think critically. Since its first class met in 1849, the UW has been turning out great thinkers and creators whose careers went far beyond the bounds of their majors. Laurel Salton Clark ’83, MD’87 came to the UW to study zoology. Thirteen years after earning her bachelor’s degree, she joined NASA as an astronaut aboard the Columbia space shuttle. Joan Cusack ’84 earned her degree in English and is now a household name with two Oscar nominations. And Virgil Abloh ’03 graduated from the College of Engineering, only to eventually be named the artistic director of Louis Vuitton’s menswear line.

The breadth and depth of the programs at the UW ensure that Badger grads can go on to achieve their dreams — even if those dreams are far different than what they planned. These five Wisconsin alumni prove that a degree from UW–Madison can lead you anywhere.

Brian Kachinsky ’04

Consumer Science | School of Human Ecology
Career: Professional BMX Athlete

Growing up in Neenah, Wisconsin, Brian Kachinsky remembers wanting to play in the National Hockey League. He came sort of close to that dream — he’s a professional athlete, but on wheels instead of blades.

Now living in Chicago, Kachinsky is a professional bicycle motocross (BMX) rider sponsored by two major brands, Vans and GT Bicycles.

As for his day-to-day duties, “no day is the same as the next,” he says, and that’s what he loves about his job. If he’s not in the Windy City creating social media content or promoting his sponsors, he’s traveling the world, designing international BMX parks, commentating on national television, or judging BMX contests.

In fact, he may soon be judging the biggest BMX contest — the 2020 Olympic qualifiers. “It hasn’t been determined yet if I’m going to be an Olympic judge,” he says, “but it’s quite possible.”

By the time his high school graduation rolled around, Kachinsky was already immersed in the world of BMX. But rather than turning pro then, he accepted admission to UW–Madison and declared a major of consumer science in the School of Human Ecology (SoHE).

He chose SoHE because of its holistic approach to business. But even after declaring his major, he wasn’t exactly sure what career path he’d end up on. “I was like, ‘I don’t know what’s ahead, exactly, but I want to be equipped for whatever comes my way,’ ” he says. “Sometimes in life, you need to shift or sidestep. I think having that wide range of coursework within the major and the school really helped out.”

Kachinsky officially turned pro while still in college, so he had to work extra hard to juggle schoolwork, extracurriculars, and competing on the BMX circuit. But after his UW graduation, he realized he could take his passion for BMX and turn it into a full-time career that could last a lifetime.

“I attribute my longevity as a BMX rider to my schooling, just because there are so many other ways I can be valuable to companies other than just being an athlete,” Kachinsky says. For example, he helps in product design and developing promotional strategies for the companies that sponsor him, and he’s even advocated for better skate-park facilities in meetings with the City of Chicago — a successful endeavor that he credits in part to a public-speaking class he took while on campus.

“It’s been a huge blessing,” Kachinsky says, “to have that foundation of skills that the UW gave me.”

Sarah Rueth MS’10

Environment and Resources | Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies
Career: Police Officer

Sarah Rueth figured out that part of knowing what you want to do means knowing what you don’t want to do. After earning her undergrad degree in biology from Illinois Wesleyan University, she came to the UW’s Nelson Institute for a master’s. “I thought I was going to work for a nature conservancy or the DNR [Department of Natural Resources],” she says. It was a specific UW research project that prompted her to attend, but while working on that research, she realized it wasn’t for her. “I really enjoyed learning about the topic, but I figured out that I didn’t like the job options as much,” Rueth says. “I don’t like being at a desk, but I’m not outdoorsy enough to be one of those people who goes out in the wild.”

But then something happened while she was living in Madison that has happened to a lot of local residents: a parking ticket. While dutifully paying her ticket online, she perused the Madison Police Department (MPD)’s website and found a page laying out their core values: dignity, service, community partnership, integrity, continuous improvement, diversity, and leadership. “I was like, ‘Wow. Those are all things that are important to me,’ ” Rueth recalls. “[I thought] it would be really cool to have a job that incorporates all that.” With the broad range of classes required for her master’s program, Rueth was able to explore her newfound interest in policing by taking a class in criminology.

After completing her degree, Rueth applied and was accepted to the MPD academy. She worked as a correctional officer and a DNR ranger (just as she had initially planned) before accepting a position as a police officer in Portage, Wisconsin. The lessons she learned in the Nelson Institute have carried over and helped inform her daily work on the force. “The Nelson Institute is all about community partnerships and taking a whole bunch of diverse views from different people and different studies and different branches and combining it into one thing,” she says. “That’s something we’re doing as well in policing. We’re trying to develop these partnerships before the problems happen. We’re trying to pull from a lot of different places to get our ideas and improve our practices.”

To top it all off, Rueth’s job as a police officer has meshed with some of her childhood dreams; the first thing she remembers wanting to be when she grew up was “either a Disney cartoonist or a veterinarian.” One day on the job, she got a traffic call in response to an orphaned fawn trying to cross the road. Rueth rescued the little Bambi and took her to a wildlife rehabilitation center, where she was cared for until she was ready to strike out on her own.

Bobby Parrish ’00

Finance, Investment, and Banking | Wisconsin School of Business
Career: Food Blogger and Social Media Influencer

Bobby Parrish followed a more traditional track — attending the UW to major in something specific (business) to do something specific (work in business). As a high schooler, he worked at a country club as a golf caddy. He remembers being around successful businesspeople, stock-market traders, and entrepreneurs, which led him to his first career goal: “I noticed that the people who were really successful were entrepreneurs,” he says. “No matter what I did, I wanted to work for myself and be my boss.”

After a first semester at the University of Northern Colorado, Parrish transferred to the UW and found the Wisconsin School of Business. Sometime around his sophomore year, he figured out that he wanted to specialize in trading. “I graduated in December of 2000, and I went to work immediately afterward. Like, the next week,” he says. Parrish worked as a stock trader at a small company outside of Chicago for a few years, then started his own trading company.

It wasn’t until he’d worked in the industry for several years that Parrish decided to turn his longtime passion into a career. “I always had a passion for cooking,” he says. Working from home with his own company, he was able to spend more time in the kitchen and entertaining friends. Eventually, Parrish and his wife, Dessi, created their first cooking video and put it on YouTube. As they continued making videos, their followers grew — now more than 1.2 million people follow FlavCity on YouTube and other social media.

Both Parrish and his wife have left their day jobs to focus all of their time and energy on developing FlavCity and bringing relevant content to their hungry fans. But, ever the businessman, Parrish first crunched the numbers to see how the income he’d gain from FlavCity would compare to what he had as a trader. “I knew that if I put my full effort behind it, the sky was the limit.” Right he was: Parrish has since shared recipes on numerous cooking shows, been a winner on an episode of Guy’s Grocery Games on the Food Network, and even published a cookbook — Keto Meal Prep by FlavCity. “We live in such an amazing time right now, where you can pretty much do whatever you want,” he says. Parrish encourages college-age kids to test the waters before committing to a major or a job. “Whatever you are passionate in, explore doing that.”

Christian Schauf ’03

Agricultural Journalism and Agricultural Business Management | College of Agricultural and Life Sciences
Career: Founder and CEO of Uncharted Supply Company; Creator of 72-Hour Survival Kit

“I applied to one college,” says Christian Schauf. “And that was Wisconsin.” He laughs at his teenage bravado now, thinking about how differently things could have gone if he hadn’t been admitted. While he was growing up on a farm in rural Wisconsin, Schauf’s parents steered him to pursue a degree in the College of Agricultural and Life Sciences (CALS) at UW–Madison. As a freshman, he didn’t know what he would do with his CALS degree, but he still knew that he was in the right place. “The best thing Wisconsin taught me was how to think,” he says. “That’s the beauty of what an environment like that gives you.”

The first dot on Schauf’s career map after college was playing in a band — Catchpenny — which toured the Middle East performing at U.S. military bases. There he started one of his first entrepreneurial ventures: building PA systems that fit into Blackhawk helicopters so the band could play at more small, remote bases. After touring in Iraq some 40 times, Schauf transitioned to corporate life, helping to found Crispin Cider (yes, that one) before taking on various marketing jobs. “Now I’m in Utah building survival kits!” he laughs.

What sent Schauf down the path to his current gig as founder and CEO of Uncharted Supply Company was something that all Wisconsinites are familiar with: snow. He was working out in Orange County, California, and decided to take a ski trip with some buddies. While he was driving to Steamboat Springs, Colorado, it started snowing. No big deal for Schauf, but for the Californians? “It added eight hours to our drive,” he recalls. “I was just watching people self-destruct around me. These are people who live on a fault line day in and day out. If two inches of snow is going to do this, what’s a 7.0 earthquake going to do?”

That’s when he saw a space in the market for what ultimately became The Seventy2, a complete 72-hour survival system that’s hyperorganized and fits neatly into a backpack. After designing the product and closing a successful Indiegogo campaign, Schauf got a call to appear on ABC’s Shark Tank. From there, the system — and the company — took off. “We’re not building a $5,000 kit for a guy on SEAL Team 6,” Schauf explains. “This is a kit designed to get anyone, novices and experts, through emergencies big and small.” Still, Schauf’s survival system has become a favorite of government organizations, such as the CIA and FBI, as well as companies including Nike, Warner Brothers, and Airbnb. In 2019, Schauf plans for the company to triple in size and release a host of new products.

“Just start” is Schauf’s advice for incoming students wondering what they’ll be. “Take the first step. Be moving in a direction. It may not be a straight line, but if you continue to head toward your due north, you’re gonna get there.”

Dalia Mogahed ’97

Chemical Engineering | College of Engineering
Career: Director of Research, Institute for Social Policy and Understanding

Most kids dream of becoming something flashy — a movie star, ballerina, race-car driver, and so on. But Dalia Mogahed dreamed of something much more profound. “What I remember wanting to do was a pursuit of justice,” she recalls. When she started at the UW, she thought she’d end up helping people through science. Her parents were professors in the College of Engineering, so declaring a chemical engineering major felt natural. For three summers, she interned with Proctor & Gamble (P&G), which led to a job offer before her graduation in December 1997. After walking the stage, Mogahed moved to Cincinnati to work in P&G’s product-research division.

After three years at P&G, Mogahed enrolled in the MBA program at the University of Pittsburgh. But as she got in the car to make the move from Cincinnati to Pittsburgh, the news broke: the day was September 11, 2001. “That was kind of a turning point in my life,” Mogahed reflects. Back in college, she had joined a number of extracurricular, activism-focused groups. “I was very involved in work that had to do with educating the campus community about Muslims and Islam and raising awareness about the suffering of people around the world,” she says. “When 9/11 happened, that activist in me got reactivated. I felt like I needed to do more to build bridges between people of different backgrounds.”

As Mogahed began her MBA studies, she also started an outreach program through the local Islamic center. But once grad school came to an end, she took a job with Gallup as a management consultant and “put that passion on the back burner.” While at Gallup, Mogahed was brought onto a team that was working on a then-fledgling idea: the Gallup World Poll. Her role was to analyze survey results from Muslim-majority countries. “It was really exciting for me to be able to analyze that data,” Mogahed says. “On my evenings and weekends, I was poring over that data, bringing the skills I learned as an engineer to this work.”

She created a presentation on her findings, which led to her appointment as the executive director of research for the Gallup Center for Muslim Studies. In 2007, she coauthored a book, Who Speaks for Islam? What a Billion Muslims Really Think, which was sent to all members of Congress. Only a few responded; one was then-senator Barack Obama. When Obama was elected president, Mogahed was appointed one of his top advisers on Muslim affairs. Today, she is the director of research for the Institute for Social Policy and Understanding, an organization created post-9/11 to educate the country about American Muslims and empower that community to “develop social policy, contribute to public policy, and innovate thought-leadership.”

As for that chemical engineering degree? Mogahed says her current work isn’t too far afield. “What I get to do is apply the tools of the scientific method — objective inquiry, research — to a highly contested, emotional topic,” she says. “It’s very valuable to have that science background: [it’s about] putting aside your bias and looking at the data objectively.”

Jason Tracy

If you’ve been to a wedding, baby shower, funeral, or birthday party in the last 13 years, you’ve probably crossed paths with Melvina Young ’90, MS’92, PhDx’07. She’s a quiet party presence — she usually arrives hidden in an envelope — but Young’s voice always leaves a heartfelt impression on the guests of honor.

Young is a senior creative writer at Hallmark, where she says she writes much more than greeting cards. “I write emotion across formats that have deep, authentic resonance for people,” she says. “I write gift and children’s books, internet content, keepsake copy, women’s empowerment editorial, and for Hallmark’s community-support efforts. I believe in the company’s mission to touch every life in a meaningful way.”

Young’s work is infused with a sincere sense of compassion for people who are experiencing major milestones. She writes regularly for Hallmark’s Mahogany collection, aimed at African American consumers, and credits her ability to craft personal messages that resonate with diverse communities to both her personal background and her academic training. Young grew up in rural Lepanto, Arkansas, during segregation, and she enrolled at the UW in the late 1980s, an era when campus was roiling from a series of racial incidents. She participated in the student movement that resulted in a new Multicultural Student Center and an ethnic studies requirement for all undergraduates, among other diversity and inclusion initiatives.

“I went to campus and found a language for things that explained my lived experience and helped me formulate an identity built in strength,” she says. “Everything you encounter is what makes you.”

Young also found faculty mentors at the UW who encouraged her to transition from activist to academic, and she earned a master’s degree in African American studies and completed PhD coursework in women’s history and U.S. history. She then left Madison to become a college instructor and eventually landed in Kansas City, Missouri, where she decided to apply her skills in a different industry.

“In my scholarship and teaching, I focused on relationships from a broad socio-historical perspective because I felt if you could understand the root causes of certain injustices and relationships, then you could build connections and coalitions that would actually effect change,” she says. “I discovered at Hallmark, I could actually achieve a similar goal through words that touch people emotionally one to one.”

Paula Bonner, UW Regent Eve Hall, and John Daniels MS’72 attended an African American alumni leadership meeting in Milwaukee in April. It was one of several meetings scheduled around the country to pull alumni constituencies together. Pang Yang Her, New Moon Productions.

Scoring a business card from a well-placed Badger is always a win. But for students launching careers in the era of Skype and LinkedIn, the prize can come from following sage advice: Go to class. That’s where some alumni are realizing a long-awaited opportunity to help students prepare for careers and build networks: they’re sharing their experiences and advice in special new classes created by the College of Letters & Science (L&S).

“Alumni wish that, when they were students, they had had some- one like that in their lives,” says David Nelson MA’07, PhD’13. As WAA’s director of alumni career networks and professional resources, he sees just 20 percent of students building alumni networks on their own. “For the rest, they’re trying to succeed in school, support themselves, and enjoy being a Badger. We’ve got to bring alumni to where they are. That’s why we are supporting L&S Career Initiative programs such as the Second Year Career Course and Career Kickstart, which will bring these discussions into residential living.”

It’s just one of the ways that the association is reinvigorating the connections that UW-Madison grads find most meaningful — including career networking, recognizing the value of diversity and inclusion, and advancing the university’s scholarship and reputation through international alumni influence.

“We want to make it possible for more alumni to say how they want to help, and to create even more opportunities where we so often see Badgers helping Badgers,” says Paula Bonner MS’78, WAA’s president and chief alumni officer.

It’s part of WAA’s role to understand what’s important to alumni in their own lives and work, and how they want to connect back to the UW, says Tracy Williams-Maclin, the association’s director of diversity and inclusion. She’s partnering with graduates — such as African American business leaders and policymakers in Madison, Milwaukee, Chicago, and Atlanta; leaders across the gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender community; and alumni of the Ho-Chunk Nation — who are giving their time to recharge student scholarship programs, recognize peer accomplishments, and lend their considerable influence to support the UW’s priorities.

“These connections are inspiring fellow alumni to become involved, encouraging our organization to diversify from within, and ultimately, sharing the message that these alumni matter,” says Williams-Maclin.

There’s great promise in similar interest among the 15,000 alumni who live abroad, says Lora Klenke ’94, WAA’s director of international alumni relations. She points to strong Badger networks in economic centers such as London and Paris — as well as across Japan, China, and Korea — to demonstrate the importance of the UW’s work to cultivate a “global mindset” among new grads.

In February, Wisconsin’s strengths in the global marketplace were clear when a state trade mission included a stop to seek counsel from alumni in London.

“The economic influence of the University of Wisconsin and its alumni is difficult to quantify,” says Genevieve Waldron ’03, cochair of the WAA: UK Chapter. “I’m proud to be associated with an institution that fosters learning, jobs, and research in my home state and around the world.”

It’s the most common question college students face: “What’s your major?”

For many, the answer is, “I don’t know yet” — much to the dismay of curious parents. But even for students who do know — the ones who have known since that first day of elementary school that they want to spend four years studying Chekhov — a major doesn’t necessarily mean they have their entire career plan mapped out.

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The College of Letters & Science (L&S) is there to help. Last fall L&S launched the Letters & Science Career Initiative (LSCI), funded by alumni. The program was designed to give second-year and transfer students the necessary skills to jumpstart their careers after graduation.

There are currently two main sections of LSCI: Inter-L&S 210 and Career Kickstart. Inter-L&S 210 is a one-credit course, rolled out at the start of 2015. Students alternate weekly between attending lectures by Professor Greg Downey and gaining hands-on, practical experience in “lab” sessions. At the end of the semester, each student will have compiled an ePortfolio documenting his or her personal journey throughout the course.

“One thing we’re trying to do is give students a scheme, a language, and a set of tools for talking about what they’ve done in the past, what they want to do in the future, what they think they can bring to an organization — and to be able to really communicate that,” says Downey, the associate dean of L&S who helped create the course.

The second component of the LSCI, Career Kickstart, is a residential program that will launch in fall 2015. Based in Ogg Hall, the program will offer on-site advising, resume and interview workshops, and special access to employers and alumni. There will also be a specialized section of Inter-L&S 210 for Ogg Hall residents.

According to Jon Cleveland, assistant director of career education, building confidence is a key part of the Career Kickstart program. “Students are going to walk away from the year in Ogg feeling more confident about where they’re headed professionally,” he says. “They’re going to be confident they have the skills to secure an internship and a job.”