Alumni and Friends: La Follette Notes Fall 2006

Alumni news

2000s

Alison (Klawiter) Klein, 2004, was named assistant director of the Wisconsin Academy for Rural Medicine, a program of the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health. The program recruits medical students who want to practice medicine in rural Wisconsin.

Bryan Gadow, 2005, is enrolled in the urban planning program at the University of Minnesotas Hubert H. Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs, which awarded him a one-year scholarship. He also is a planning intern for the city of Golden Valley, a suburb west of Minneapolis.

Jennifer Leavitt-Moy, 2006, is executive director of MAGNET, a nonprofit organization that provides professional development, civic involvement, public policy, and social and cultural opportunities for people in their 20s, 30s and early 40s to increase their involvement in, connections with and commitments to the community.

Madison area alumni Save Thursday, Feb. 8, 2007, for the annual reception at Inn on the Park on Madison's Capitol Square, 5 to 8 p.m. Information and to RSVP: alumni@lafollette.wisc.edu

Alum joins South Carolina economics faculty From the class of 2002, Chad Cotti, right, is teaching in the economics department at the University of South Carolina. He completed his Ph.D. in economics at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee in May. He has authored a couple of papers on the economics of smoking bans. Here he visits with La Follette School assistant professor Geoffrey Wallace at the fall research conference of the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management.

Alumni News Methodology Many of the data in this section of the newsletter were collected in response to a call for news sent via e-mail to those alumni and friends with e-mail addresses on file. The author of the originating missive suggests its timingjust after noon CDT on a Fridaycorrelates significantly to the robust response. More than 20 news items from around the world (well, Nigeria, Canada and the United States) means the editor is holding bulletins for the spring issue. To share your news at any time, or to update contact information, send a note to alumni@lafollette.wisc.edu, or fill out an online form. Photos are welcome, high resolution, 1800 x 2700 pixels, preferred. Support the La Follette School ... Questions? E-mail alumni@lafollette.wisc.edu.

La Follette alumni rally round Bob at UW Spirit Day at the Wisconsin Capitol La Follette School alumni held a mini-reunion at the Wisconsin Capitol near the bust of the schools namesake, Robert M. La Follette. A few of the many proud La Follette School alumni working in Wisconsin state government joined Fighting Bob to show their school spirit on UW Spirit Day in the state Capitol, reports John Anderson, second from left, a legislative assistant with the Assembly. With him from left are Darin Renner, Legislative Fiscal Bureau; Lenn Schneider, Department of Workforce Development; Senator Tim Carpenter; and Grant Huber, Senate. Sponsored by the Wisconsin Alumni Association last spring, University of Wisconsin Spirit Day encouraged alumni to wear school colors while university officials visited with legislators and other policymakers in the Capitol. (Photo by Jay Salvo)

Alumni and friends can help La Follette School students advance their careers Contact Career Development and let us know about: job contacts job and internship postings your willingness to do informational interviews your availability to speak on a panel or at a career brown bag Attend our alumni reception in Madison on February 8. Let us know about informal alumni gatherings in other cities. Questions? E-mail .

Michelle Woolery, 2004, has accepted a position with United Way in Detroit. She is a part of the agencys new involvement in local policy and community planning. To help the agency be more strategic about funding decisions, she is conducting research and program evaluations. She presented a paper on fiscal federalism and equality at an American Political Science Association conference.

Julia Styles, 2005, returned to Wisconsin in June from six months abroad in Amsterdam, Israel and Germany for the World Cup. She traveled as part of a program with University of the Nations. I met people from all over the world and now have friends on every continent, she says. She is an assistant at Martin Schreiber and Associates, a public affairs firm in Madison.

Ashe Hat, 2006, is with the Center for Strategic and International Studies South Asia Program in Washington, D.C.

Ian Crichton, 2003, graduated from Stanford Law School in May and is at Boies, Schiller and Flexner LLP in Washington, D.C. His practice is in general civil litigation and antitrust law.

1990s

Ken Moehringer, 1998, is bureau chief of budget services for the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation. He joined the department in 2002 after working for the New York State Division of the Budget, his first position after graduating with a master of public affairs degree from La Follette. He began working as a budget examiner through the New York State public management internship program. He supervises 11 budget analysts who are responsible for all facets of the agencys operations and capital budgets.

After seven years as a management consultant at BearingPoint Inc., Ayana (Wayne) Bembry, 1998, recently joined Grant Thornton LLPs Global Public Sector. She manages teams of consultants to deliver innovative business solutions to federal, state and local government clients.

Shel Gross, 1990, is the project manager and main author of a $1.1 million grant to the Mental Health Association in Milwaukee County, of which Gross is public policy director. The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Administration of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services awarded the three-year grant. Wisconsin designated the Mental Health Association to submit the grant on the states behalf.

Jason Witt, 1999, was promoted in August to deputy director of the Rock County Human Services Department in Janesville, Wisconsin. He had worked for the department since August 2002 as the administrative services division manager. He earlier worked for the Wisconsin Department of Health and Family Services as a budget and policy analyst.

Robert Zeinemann, 1996, was married in 2004 to Rachael Wyman, a cardiology fellow at University of Wisconsin Hospital. He earned a law degree from Marquette University in 2006 and now works for the law firm Wheeler, Van Sickle and Anderson in Madison where he focuses on municipal and land use law. He worked for the Wisconsin Department of Administration from 1997-2003.

Cody Rice, 1995, is a program manager with the Commission for Environmental Cooperation of North America in Montreal. The North American Free Trade Agreement created the CEC, which the U.S., Canadian and Mexican governments fund. Im managing programs related to reporting on the state of the North American environment and mapping environmental themes at the continental level, Rice says. As a native of Texas, Im also learning to appreciate poutine and hockey. His time in Madison may have helped him with the poutinefrench fries covered with fresh cheese curds and hot gravy.

1980s

Buff Wright Schoenfeld, 1981, received the 2006 Award for Distinguished Service from the National Association of Presidential Assistants in Higher Education in February 2006. She served on the associations board for eight years and was president in 2001. She is executive assistant to the president of Western Washington University.

Shelley Hagan, 1983, was named the director of the Wisconsin Office of Juvenile Offender Review in January. She oversees the parole function for the state juvenile correctional system. The office staff are at the three Wisconsin secured juvenile correctional institutions, where they coordinate each youths case-planning, review the youths progress toward individualized goals, and officially release the youth when goals have been attained and risk to the public is reduced. Hagans job also includes providing information and services to victims of youth crime and coordinating the review of youth who are potentially eligible for prosecution as sexually violent persons under Ch. 980.

Yakubu Bako, 1982, retired from Nigerias army with the rank of colonel. After graduating from La Follette, he served as a major in the United Nations peacekeeping operation in Iran during its war with Iraq. He was a military governor for one of Nigerias 36 states from 1993-98. He then served as special adviser on electoral matters to Nigerias president.

1970s

Wayne R. Nilsestuen, 1972, is the new mission director for Guatemala with the U.S. Agency for International Development. Before this he was AID mission director in Paraguay. In Guatemala, Nilsestuen manages programs in democracy and the rule of law, economic growth, and health and education. Nilsestuen earlier served as AID deputy mission director in Bolivia and Honduras, and director of the Office of Regional Sustainable Development in the Bureau for Latin America and the Caribbean in AIDs office in Washington, D.C.

John Montgomery, 1977, has worked in the State Budget Office of Wisconsins Department of Administration for 24 years upon graduation from the University of Wisconsin-Madison with a double degree in public policy and urban and regional planning. He spent 14 years as deputy state budget director. He became deputy division administrator at the Office of the Commissioner of Insurance in 2001. He was recently given responsibility to manage the Local Government Property Insurance Fund and the State Life Insurance Fund, in addition to his administrative duties.

In 1993, William E. Frantz, PE, 1975, retired from the Wisconsin Department of Transportation after a 37-year career in public service as a civil engineer, manager and administrator. He began teaching as an adjunct professor at Cardinal Stritch University in 1986 and went full time in 1993 at the Madison campus. I recently retired (again) from Cardinal Stritch as an assistant professor in 2005, Frantz reports. After a time of reflection, this fall I joined the new University of Phoenix-Madison campus as an associate faculty member and Capella University (a fully online school based in Minneapolis) as an online instructor. Both of these positions, being part-time, allow the possibility of planning travel and other activities that so-called retired people do.

Conrad G. Hutterli, 1977, is an attorney in Portland, Oregon. He serves as a private attorney representative on a subcommittee of the Oregon Family Law Advisory Committee sponsored by the Oregon Department of Justice. It deals with issues relating to Title IVD, the child support collection program. In addition to his law practice, he edited the Family Law Newsletter for the Family Law Section of the Oregon State Bar Association for 16 years.

Index for La Follette Notes fall 2006