As a Madison-native, two-time Badger, and former Wisconsin School of Business employee, Alisa Robertson (BA ’94, MBA ’03) has spent a lifetime championing UW–Madison.
For the past 14 years, she’s held senior-level positions with the Wisconsin Foundation and Alumni Association (WFAA), where she’s shaped strategic growth, laid the groundwork for the $4 billion All Ways Forward campaign, helped usher in some of the best fundraising years in WFAA history—and is only getting started.
In January, Robertson stepped into the top job at WFAA: president and CEO. She succeeds another member of the Business Badger community, Mike Knetter—who previously served as WSB’s dean—and now oversees more than 300 employees at UW–Madison’s hub for advancement, philanthropy, and alumni engagement.
WSB: What is your overall vision for WFAA?
Alisa Robertson: We want to be the best at what we do. We want to be the best at building pride and affinity, the best at building a strong alumni network and securing resources. Our exceptional team is very focused on bringing in results. They’re also focused on incorporating best practices not just from other institutions like ours, but also the business world, and figuring out how to incorporate these elements into our work.
The cost to run a truly exceptional world-class university has increased, so support from alumni and donors who care about UW–Madison is more important than ever. To that end, I think we need to embrace new technologies that can help us scale our work to engage more alumni and better understand their interests. To me, it comes down to: Can your university and alumni association know you as well as a company like Amazon does? We need to be able to incorporate and embrace tools to help us better deliver content that is of interest to our alumni and friends in a personal and meaningful way.
WSB: How did WSB prepare you for your current role?
AR: The business school has historically been very strong at engaging its network, and working there gave me a front row seat to great work being done in advancement, alumni relations, development, and communications. That’s helped me think about how we might apply these best practices more broadly at the university level. When Mike Knetter and I joined the UW Foundation, we brought with us the insights we learned from the business alumni community about how they wanted to be engaged and how we could add value.
I also decided to take on the evening MBA program while working at WSB, which was intense, but incredibly valuable. I learned so much from the academic content itself but also from working alongside the other people in the program. Getting my MBA was probably one of the most important things I did in preparing for the rest of my career.
WSB: What’s something about this work that fuels you?
AR: These days, an alumni event is one of the few opportunities where people with really diverse viewpoints can get together around a common interest. Our large base of alumni and donors is full of people with different views and passions. Two individuals sitting together at an event may be on completely opposite ends of the political spectrum, but maybe they have a shared interest in Badger athletics or cancer research. That allows them to have a conversation. I believe our work, both at the university and WFAA, can really bring people together in a way you don’t see as much anymore.
WSB: What are a few of the most memorable moments from your career at WFAA?
AR: Being part of the merger between the UW Foundation and the Wisconsin Alumni Association was an experience of a lifetime. The 2014 merger was particularly nuanced in that we had two nonprofit organizations with two boards and a lot of passion on both sides, and we had to be strategic about how to bring everyone together around an idea that we all could believe in. Ultimately, we ended up with an entity that, I believe, is much stronger and more productive.
“Get involved if you’re not involved—and stay involved.”
—Alisa Robertson (BA ’94, MBA ’03)
There’s also the All Ways Forward campaign. University campaigns can sometimes last up to a decade, and with the planning factored in, ours was about eight-and-a-half years. But the amazing success of the campaign is something that I think we can all be proud of. The campaign ended in 2021, but to me, it feels like just yesterday. We’re actually now in the early stages of planning for our next campaign and applying what we learned from All Ways Forward, and I think we’ll be in a great position to build on that.
WSB: What have you learned from working with your predecessor—and former WSB dean—Mike Knetter?
AR: Mike is an economist, and I was an English major, so we look at things from very different vantage points. But Mike is also a visionary, and I’ve really come to appreciate and understand his way of thinking, as well as how he approaches both problems and opportunities. I’ve really learned so much from him. He’s also given me a true appreciation and understanding for how important it is to be passionate about your work. In this line of work, you can’t fake it, and Mike lives and breathes his passion for this university every day.
WSB: How can WSB play a role in driving the university forward?
AR: Cross-disciplinary research and education are really the wave of the future, and I think WSB has the opportunity to have an even greater reach and impact across campus—and beyond—by finding those opportunities to collaborate. WSB is uniquely positioned with Dean Samba as a leader. He is an extraordinary collaborator and is focused on finding the opportunities at the intersection of business and other areas of strength on campus, like AI and entrepreneurship.
WSB: You have the attention of your fellow WSB alumni. What message would you like to share?
AR: Get involved if you’re not involved—and stay involved. Think about how you can help both WSB and the university continue to be the incredible institutions that they are today. You can help by mentoring students or hiring alumni, but you can also help by just talking up the school to others. Part of what has built our incredibly passionate alumni base is that people love talking about UW–Madison. The next time you’re on vacation, try wearing a Wisconsin t-shirt or hat. Multiple people will come up to you and tell you about their connection to the university. It’s truly remarkable how passionate and energetic the Wisconsin alumni network is.