Wisconsin Business Alumni is a powerful network providing benefits and networking opportunities to our more than 35,000 alumni around the world, as well as our students, faculty and staff.
Connecting with Alumni
In 2004, Wisconsin Business Alumni (WBA) created a Board of Advisors with 16 initial members to provide strategic direction to WBA. The board focuses on identifying ways to make it easier for alumni to interact with each other and with students. We hope that by making WBA a more valuable resource for alumni, we will also encourage alumni to provide more support to the school.
Serving Alumni
WBA works to continually enhance the value of the business degrees of Wisconsin alumni. In 2004-2005, WBA served alumni by providing an extensive online alumni directory and launching a job board and other career services. WBA also hosted networking events for alumni around the country.
Recognizing Achievement
In 2004-05, two outstanding alumni
received Distinguished Business
Alumnus Awards
Jeffrey Rotsch
MBA '74
Executive Vice President,
Worldwide Sales & Channel Development
General Mills
Minneapolis, Minn.
Tadashi Okamura
MBA '73
President & CEO
Toshiba Corporation
Tokyo, Japan
Benefiting Students
Over the past year, alumni helped implement our school's strategy by serving as guest speakers, making financial gifts, hiring our students and fellow alumni and by sharing their real-world experiences with students as informal mentors. Students use the WBA online directory to make contacts and locate potential mentors in target industries. Alumni also played a critical role by providing word-of-mouth advertising for our newly redesigned MBA program. By encouraging colleagues to attend the UW-Madison, alumni helped ensure we had our strongest MBA class in history.
Improving Communication
Wisconsin Business Alumni's UPDATE magazine was completely redesigned in 2004, based on feedback from alumni. The new UPDATE includes feature articles on current business topics and an expanded alumni news section. WBA News, a quarterly online newsletter, debuted in spring of 2004 and features ways to get involved with the School of Business, alumni profiles and articles on current business topics written by alumni.
Looking Ahead
In 2006, Wisconsin Business Alumni will redesign on-line services in response to evolving alumni needs and advancing technology. Alumni will benefit from a newly integrated on-line experience-including the WBA Directory and finding and applying for industry- specific jobs via the WBA Job Board.