Betty Awards 2022

PRESENTS

THE 2022

HONORING BETTY QUADRACCI AND OUTSTANDING FEMALE LEADERS IN MILWAUKEE

TUESDAY, DECEMBER 6 Saint Kate - The Arts Hotel

Program 11:30 A.M.

Arnold Palmers and Conversation

Lunch Menu STA RT E R

NOON

Ballroom Opens

Caesar salad with garlic crouton, Parmesan and Romano cheese.

ENTRÉES Choice of

12:10 P.M.

Opening Comments Carole Nicksin, Publisher and Editor-in-Chief, Milwaukee Magazine

Almond-crusted whitefish with brown butter green beans, mushroom risotto and lemon cream

Tribute to Betty Quadracci and Quadracci Family Award Presentation

Roasted chicken breast with Parmesan polenta, roasted mushrooms, asparagus and tomato cream

Joel Quadracci, Chairman, President & CEO, Quad

Tahini-roasted cauliflower with quinoa, tabbouleh, walnut and golden raisin agrodolce (vegetarian)

Silver Sponsor Remarks Angela Taylor, Deputy Director of Communications, Baird

DESSERT German chocolate cake with Coco Lopez and toasted coconut

Linda Benfield, Partner, Foley & Lardner LLP

Awards Presentation Katie Williams, Associate Publisher, Milwaukee Magazine

Please enjoy your meal during the proceedings.

1:30 P.M.

We say goodbye until next year!

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Welcome T

hank you for joining us in celebrating the life and legacy of the late Betty Ewens Quadracci, founding publisher of Milwaukee Magazine.

Today we will honor seven remarkable women who exemplify the quest for excellence for which Betty was known.

Each award category represents one of Betty’s outstanding characteristics: Bridge-Builder, Groundbreaker, Risk Taker. The Standout Sister award salutes a woman who works to raise up other women, and the Arts Advocate award acknowledges someone who shares Betty’s love and appreciation of arts and culture. And the Tenacious B award honors a woman who does not give up.

In addition, Betty’s children Richard, Kathryn, Joel and Elizabeth make their own selection of a woman to honor with the Quadracci Family Award.

Betty passed away in 2013, but her vision continues to guide us at Milwaukee Magazine. In all that we do, celebrating the people and organizations who make Milwaukee an evolving, vibrant city is the keystone of our mission.

We thank you – our readers, advertisers and sponsors – for your support of this event and of our publication. As we prepare to enter our 40th anniversary year, the Milwaukee Magazine Betty loved so much is as strong as ever.

With gratitude, – THE MILWAUKEE MAGAZINE STAFF

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CONGRATULATIONS BETTY AWARD WINNERS! All of us at Associated Bank Private Wealth would like to congratulate this year’s Betty Award Winners. Your vision inspires the lives of women in our community and beyond.

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TRIBUTE

Betty Ewens Quadracci 1 9 3 8 - 2 013

B

etty Quadracci was a force of nature. She overcame childhood polio and, with a fierce resolve, went on to accomplish more things than seem humanly possible in her 75 years.

She taught impoverished schoolchildren in South Carolina and helped start a Montessori school in Waukesha. With her husband, Harry, she co-founded Quad, which started as a printing company and grew to be a multibillion-dollar global organization.

A native of Milwaukee, Betty graduated from Trinity College in Washington, D.C., and attended the University of Fribourg, Switzerland. She was a founder of Milwaukee Women Inc. and served on many boards that addressed a wide range of issues, including Artists Working in Education, Preserve Our Parks and the University Club of Milwaukee. Betty was also president of the Windhover Foundation, a philanthropic organization funded by Quad and the Quadracci family.

In all that she did, she was known for her sharp, inquisitive mind, no-nonsense attitude and willingness to speak the truth as she saw it. Together with Harry, Betty kicked off fundraising for a stunning addition to the Milwaukee Art Museum. The couple were instrumental in bringing Santiago Calatrava to our city to design the pavilion that now bears their name – the Spanish architect’s first project in the United States.

In addition to all of the above, she ran Milwaukee Magazine for

30 years, where she proved to be a stickler for accuracy who didn’t mind ruffling feathers.

In today’s parlance, we’d call her a disruptor. While helming the magazine, Betty also served as president of Quad/Creative LLC, a graphic design firm she launched in 1985.

A friend and mentor of many and the mother of four – Richard, Kathryn, Joel and Elizabeth – Betty was the inspiration that pro­pelled others to do more than they ever imagined.

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THE QUADRACCI FA M I LY AWA R D

JULIE TOLAN Pre s e n te d b y Jo e l Qu a d ra cc i, C h a i r m a n, Pre s i d e n t & C EO, Qu a d

PHOTOS BY ALIZA BARAN

WHEN JULIE TOLAN took over as president and CEO of

the Milwaukee YMCA in 2013, she didn’t realize that the organization was one month away from a crisis. Faced with $30 million in debt, the YMCA had spent the past years trimming benefits, salaries and budgets, and soon after Tolan started, 10 members of the management team quit, pursuing better offers elsewhere.

A Milwaukee native, Tolan had years of leadership experience. She had served as the President of the United Performing Arts Fund and spent 10 years as Vice President of University Advancement at Marquette before coming to the YMCA. She gathered a task force to examine the situation and concluded that if nothing in the organization changed, it would run out of cash within a year. She undertook a comprehensive revaluation of the YMCA’s programming, finding multiple areas where she believed it had overreached. At that same time, the YMCA filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. The organization survived and emerged reinvented in 2015. “If there ever was a definition of the ‘right leader at the right time,’ Julie was it,’ said Richard Canter, the YMCA’s chairman of the board of directors, in a statement afterward.

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Tolan took many lessons from the experience shepherding the YMCA back to organizational health, one of the most important being the need to embrace change. “I like to say that the shadow side of passion for mission is resistance to change,” she says. “My real focus is on leading change.”

In 2016, Tolan left her position at the YMCA, and the next year she and her husband took ownership of Lauber Business Partners and its sub-organization Lauber Community Partners, where she now consults with nonprofits like the Florentine Opera and First Stage, sharing the hardwon wisdom she’s earned.

KELSEY KAUFMANN R I S K TA K E R

This fearless person never settles for the status quo.

Pre s e n te d b y L a u re l S c h u l z , V i ce Pre s i d e n t Acco u n t E x ec u t i ve, Ao n

KELSEY KAUFMANN TOOK OVER

ownership of Cactus Club in February 2020, one month before the pandemic shut it down. She had worked at the club for the past decade, starting as a bartender.

Growing up in the northern suburbs of Milwaukee, she had been playing drums in bands since middle school. While still performing, she graduated from UW-Milwaukee and went on to study water policy at its graduate school. She eventually dropped out and started working at the venue full-time, and in 2016, she began overseeing operations.

When COVID hit, she and the club’s staff took the shutdown as an opportunity to expand Cactus Club’s programming. While the club continues to host concerts, the venue is now also used for book clubs, makers markets, food pop-ups and much more. “The club has broadened its lens … to a community space,” says Kaufmann. Part of that broadening includes ensuring that the space is a safe and welcoming place for people across all identities. Kaufmann’s latest effort is launching a nonprofit called Cactus+, which will promote arts education, and to begin a major fundraising campaign to improve Cactus Club’s accessibility.

“We want a space that people feel welcome and comfortable accessing and participating in,” Kaufmann says. “Having a social space to meet other people that have similar creative practices or aspirations, that to me is the most exciting.”

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READY TO LEAD.

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Congratulations Dana World-Patterson!

As a the “Standout Sister” award recipient, you’ve been recognized for helping to build the next generation of strong women.

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At the Froedtert & the Medical College of Wisconsin health network, we’re people helping people. And we never lose sight of that.

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Congratulations to each of the Betty Award winners. Thank you for your outstanding work in our community.

DANA WORLDPATTERSON S TA N D O U T SISTER

A woman known for her support of other women Pre s e n te d b y D r. C h e r yl S .

Mo o re, E x ec u t i ve D i rec to r o f Ca ree r De ve l o p m e n t, Al ve r n o Col l e g e

FOURTEEN YEARS ago, Dana

World-Patterson asked a group of high school girls she was working with if they had ever been touched inappropriately.

Fourteen of the 15 girls raised their hands. “I was in shock,” World-Patterson says. She was prompted to ask the girls that question because she had recently joined the Human Trafficking Task Force of Greater Milwaukee (then known as the Milwaukee County Human Trafficking Task Force). She had been invited by Martha Love, a prominent activist, who knew

that World-Patterson had extensive experience working with women and girls as the founder of Visions Etiquette Training. World-Patterson was later named, and now remains, the chair of the task force, where she leads monthly public meetings to develop ways to combat trafficking in Milwaukee. In 2014, she founded a nonprofit, Foundations for Freedom, that works to achieve the same end through education, advocacy and support for survivors. Most recently, the foundation acquired an eight-unit apartment building to house victims of human trafficking.

World-Patterson finds that the small victories motivate her to keep up the fight. For instance, one trafficked woman called her every day for a year-and-a-half and told her how she was rebuilding her life. Each call was another victory: a job found, money saved, a new outlook forming.

“Our mantra is one less,” World-Patterson says. “One less victim in Milwaukee is one less victim in the world.”

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Renaissance Theaterworks congratulates our very own Suzan Fete and other Betty Award winners!

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Jan 20 - Feb 12

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SUZAN FETE GROUNDBREAKER

She treads boldly where few have gone before.

Pre s e n te d b y Li s a R a s m u s s e n, Ma n ag i ng D i rec to r, Re n a i s s a n ce Th ea te r w o rk s

WHEN SUZAN FETE started

Renaissance Theaterworks in 1993, she was 34 years old, working as an ICU nurse and pregnant. Fete, an actress, had moved to Milwaukee from Cleveland four years earlier with her husband. When she wasn’t working at Mount Sinai, she immersed herself in the city’s theater scene. She soon realized how few of the plays being produced were written by women, which led her to realize how few women were directing those plays or holding any leadership positions at all in

theater companies. “It started to dawn on me that women weren’t given the same opportunities as men,” Fete says.

Fete and four other women – two of whom were also mothers – founded Renaissance Theaterworks together.

The company was dedicated to putting on plays written, directed and performed by women. “History is determined by who decides whose stories are told,” says Fete.

Now, after three decades, Renaissance remains Milwaukee’s first and only professional theater company founded and run by women – and it has become a major force in the city’s arts scene. In 2012, Fete helped launch the BRINK New Play Festival, promoting new work by Midwestern women playwrights, and the festival has since grown to showcase many talented new voices. By 2020, Renaissance shows were selling out so frequently that the company moved to a new, larger theater in Walker’s Point in 2021.

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DOMINIQUE SAMARI BRIDGE-BUILDER

Making Milwaukee a better place for all Pre s e n te d b y B e th G a ro u tte, CO O, Ca n ce r Trea t m e n t Ce n te r s o f Am e r i ca

GROWING UP OUTSIDE Cincinnati,

Dominique Samari wanted to emulate Clair Huxtable of “The Cosby Show.” “I think the idea of being a lawyer was planted in me watching her,” Samari says. After graduating from Ohio University, she applied to law schools across the country.

She landed at Marquette and moved to Milwaukee, a city she’d never seen before. “What I found in Milwaukee was that the city is socially and physically dissected into parts,” she says. She wanted to do what she could to address that segregation.

After graduating from law school and spending almost four years in Afghanistan designing criminal justice programs for the U.S. State Department, she returned to Milwaukee in 2011 to start P3 Development Group with Genyne Edwards. P3 designs programs that promote diversity, equity and inclusion in nonprofits and other organizations, including the Milwaukee Public Library and the Girl Scouts of Wisconsin.

In 2020, Samari started a new project to help bridge the divide in Milwaukee. The Belonging Project, which later morphed into an app called Kin, paired Milwaukeeans across different perspectives, often racial, for a series of six conversations, the goal being greater understanding. Kin relaunched in October as Kin Universe, a national program.

“We’re just trying to create impact,” Samari says. “The end goal is to shift the disparities and improve people’s lives.”

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DINORAH MÁRQUEZ A R T S A DVO C AT E

A catalyst helping to build and expand Milwaukee’s art scene Pre s e n te d b y Al b e r to Ma l d o n a d o, D i rec to r o f th e Ro b e r to He r n á n d e z Ce n te r, UWM

DINORAH MÁRQUEZ FOUND SAFETY and inspiration in the

violin. When she was 10 years old, Márquez’s family immigrated from her hometown of Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, to El Paso, Texas. When Márquez arrived in the United States, she didn’t speak English.

At home, she dealt with domestic violence and at school, she faced bullying. But at school, she was also given the opportunity to learn music. She ended up choosing to play the violin and was immediately enthralled.

After attending Northwestern University and working in Chicago,

Márquez returned to Mexico to reconnect with her roots. She moved to Xico, Veracuz, where she and a friend found that the traditional music of the village, the sones, were being lost. Márquez made it her mission to reinvigorate the tradition, and she soon became the first woman to perform the sones during the village festival.

She moved to Milwaukee when a professor who saw her perform in Mexico offered her a scholarship at UW-Milwaukee, where she graduated in 2001. A year later, she started the Latino Arts Strings Program at the United Community Center, to pass on all she had learned. The program provides musical training in string instruments to children. Its first year, 26 students enrolled. Now, the program enlists around 200 each year. Márquez teaches classical rigor and technique, but also what she calls, “heritage education,” teaching her students the traditional music that their ancestors knew.

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Congratulations to all the 2022 Betty Award Winners!

Especially Our Tenacious Leader...

Renée Anderson Women with vision, creativity and courage can do amazing things. In fact, it was the visionary women of the Episcopal Church who founded Saint John’s in 1868. Their legacy continues thanks to tenacious women like our accomplished CEO, Renée Anderson.

414-831-6900 • www.SaintJohnsMilw.org • 1840 North Prospect Avenue • Milwaukee, Wisconsin 53202

RENÉE ANDERSON TENACIOUS B

One who embodies Betty Quadracci’s perseverance Pre s e n te d b y Lu c i a K l e ba r, D i rec to r o f S a l e s & Ma rk e t i ng , S a i n t Jo h n’s O n Th e L a k e

IN THE ’90S, Renée Anderson

was working as an accountant, and she wanted a change. “I realized that I was not interested any longer in accounting for things. I needed a connection to people,” she says. She took the director of finance position at Saint John’s On The Lake senior living community in 1996. Five years later, she was named a vice president, and in 2011, she became president and CEO. Over her tenure, the East Side community undertook a reimagining of senior care. Starting in 1999,

Saint John’s implemented a philosophy of “person-centered care.” That means, in essence, allowing the residents much greater control over their own lives than retirement communities traditionally offered. That philosophy reshaped Saint John’s, from its seven dimensions of wellness program that focuses on caring for each resident holistically, to its new South and North towers, which were designed to be more open and communal.

In 2018, Anderson helped create the Symposium on Aging, a free, annual three-day event open to all. And in 2022, she launched Saint John’s Community Impact Fund, an endowment that supports local organizations that serve seniors. “If a situation can be improved upon ... then I see little reason to be content,” Anderson says. “I push myself to do more, and do better, and I expect others to do so as well. Complacency is just not acceptable.”

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“

Let life take you.

Have faith and keep moving forward.

“

— BETTY EWENS QUADRACCI

Congratulations to the 2022 Betty Award winners!

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