Alumni News
Compiled by Paula Wagner Apfelbach '83

90s

The newly appointed president and chief operating officer for group operations at Chicago-based CNA Insurance is Rob McGinnis '90 of suburban Highland Park. In his new role, McGinnis is responsible for the division's strategic business units, $3 billion in revenue, and 2,200 employees. He was previously with United Healthcare.

"Chicago is treating me very well," writes Windy City photographer Todd Rosenberg '90. For the second consecutive year, his images will be featured in the Children's Defense Fund calendar. To see or order the 2002 version, visit their site at www.childrensdefense.org.

The University of Massachusetts Press has published Reading on the Middle Border: The Culture of Print in Late-Nineteenth-Century Osage, Iowa, by Christine Pawley MA'91, PhD'96. She teaches at the University of Iowa in Iowa City.

"No reservations? No problem," says Mark Peneski '91, a co-owner of the Denver-based Sushi Redi. The company makes fresh sushi - more than seventeen thousand pieces daily - and delivers it to grocery stores in the Denver and Dallas markets. He also works with Brand Management, a Denver-based sales and marketing consulting firm that he co-founded in 1995. The company specializes in launching consumer products in the convenience store industry.

This just in: "Please alert our friends that their fellow alum, now named Faux Jean [the artist formerly known as Matthew Schindler '91], is heading a band by the same name in the Minneapolis area. Warming up at the Cabooze in Minneapolis recently, Faux Jean ran into several Madison alums and chatted about Bascom-induced calf aches. To hear the intellectual rantings of this group, send our friends to www.mp3.com/FauxJean. Cheers!"

Tom Bernthal '95 writes that he "just left NBC after winning an Emmy Award last year to begin consulting and advising on media projects." A resident of Los Angeles, he "has joined the Washington consulting firm Luntz Research, and spends much of his time on the road, working for clients Merrill Lynch, Disney, and the Venetian Hotel and Casino."

As hard as it might be to believe, some Mad grads actually leave the beloved shore of Lake Mendota to seek advanced degrees at other institutions. Here are a few who went through spring 2001 commencement - elsewhere: David Schilling '95 received a JD from the William Mitchell College of Law in St. Paul, Minnesota, while Christian Magnell '97 received his master of divinity degree from Luther Seminary, also in St. Paul. The Medical College of Wisconsin in Milwaukee conferred MDs upon Christopher Mildenberg '95, Andrew Neeb '95, Charles Nordstrom '96, Cresta Wedel Jones '97, and Kelly Siudzinski '97.

After working as an agricultural photographer for twenty years, Richard Steven Street PhD'95 returned to academia as a visiting professor at Stanford [California] University, where he designed and taught an illustrated history course on California farm workers. Now Street has received a Guggenheim Fellowship to finish his study of photographers and California farm workers from 1850 to 2000. He lives in San Anselmo, California.

Joseph Kultgen '96 of New York City and Jeremy Ahrens MS'97 of Austin, Texas, recently completed the launch of the New York-based TrekShare.com, an application that travel-related Web sites use to allow their end users to publish travelogues online. Kultgen writes that the inspiration for the firm came after he returned from a five-month stint as a photojournalist in Africa.

"As a proud husband of a UW alumna," writes Alex Mautz '97, "I feel it necessary to brag a little about my wife. A former UW volleyball player, Jaime Smith Mautz '97 now owns a successful Internet business with estimated first-year sales of $1 million." The company, the San Diego-based Pacific Ink, offers inkjet and laser products.

From more than nine hundred applicants, Harsha Reddy '98 was chosen to receive one of thirty, two-year 2001 Paul and Daisy Soros Fellowships for New Americans, which support graduate study by immigrants and their children. Reddy is currently studying at Harvard Medical School.

Writes Jolanta Zandecki '98 of Berkeley, California, "Recently, I found out that I have been accepted as a Fulbright grantee to study in Poland. I will be there for ten months, learning alongside Polish feminists in the flourishing women's movement. I am looking forward to meeting strong women and men who are working for gender equality and justice in Poland today."

Alumni News: 40s-50s, 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s, 2000s

Return to On Wisconsin main page