2019 Speakers

Troupe Member | Monkey Business Institute

Casem AbuLughod has been performing ever since he first pretended to be a nice guy. Fond of hugs and a big fan of beards, AubLughod is only part teddy bear. He enjoys reading, good storytelling, kale, acting, chocolate, coffee and hanging out with his Lifeboo.

U.S. District Court Judge | Eastern District of Wisconsin

Lynn Adelman has served as the U.S. District Court judge for the Eastern District of Wisconsin since 1997. Prior to that he served in the Wisconsin State Senate as a Democrat for 20 years, representing a district near Milwaukee.

President and CEO | Urban League of Greater Madison

Dr. Ruben Anthony has been the leader of the Urban League of Greater Madison since 2015. He spent much of his career with the Wisconsin Department of Transportation, where he was its chief operations officer from 2003 to 2010.

Vice President and Chief Medical Officer | WEA Trust and Health Tradition Health Plan

As chief medical officer, Dr. Tim Bartholow is tasked with leading all clinical functions to achieve safer and more affordable care, focusing on proper access, appropriateness, harm avoidance and engaging members to action. He serves on the boards of Wisconsin Literacy, United Way of Dane County and the Wisconsin Collaborative for Health Care Quality. He advises Venture Investors, KIIO, the UW Master of Public Health Program, and the UW Population Health Institute.

Author

Chloe Benjamin is the author of the best-seller “The Immortalists” and “The Anatomy of Dreams,” which received the Edna Ferber Fiction Book Award. Originally from San Francisco, she lives now in Madison and received her Master of Fine Arts from UW-Madison.

Director | Community Justice Network for Youth

Based in Oakland, California, the CJNY is a national network housed at the W. Haywood Burns Institute, a national youth justice organization that focuses on racial and ethnic disparities in youth and adult justice systems. Tracy Benson has over 20 years of experience in youth justice organizing, including work in Madison with Freedom Inc. She also worked for nearly a decade at the Lussier Community Education Center on Madison’s west side.

Author/Dogsledder

Blair Braverman is an author and dogsledder who travels thousands of miles of wilderness with her sled dogs each winter. She is a correspondent for Outside magazine and has written for The New York Times, “This American Life” and Vogue among other media outlets. Her first book, “Welcome to the Goddamn Ice Cube,” came out in 2016. She lives in northern Wisconsin with her husband, Quince Mountain, and their 26 huskies.

Co-Owner | Stone-Front Farm

Andy Buttles and his wife, Lyn, call Stone-Front Farm in Lancaster, Wisconsin, home. They have two daughters, Christina, 12 and Kayla, 9. Andy’s family has farmed in Wisconsin since 1835, and Stone-Front is a dairy farm that concentrates on producing high quality milk and merchandizing World-Class cattle genetics.

U.S. Rep., D-San Antonio

Joaquin Castro is a Democrat representing Texas’ 20th Congressional District, which includes about half of his native San Antonio plus some nearby suburbs. He was first elected to Congress in 2012 and his committee assignments include seats on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, as well as the Foreign Affairs Committee and the Education and Labor Committee.

Democratic Presidential Candidate

Julian Castro was secretary of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development under Barack Obama from 2014 to 2017, and prior to that was the mayor of San Antonio. He announced his bid for the presidential nomination for the Democratic Party on Jan. 12 of this year.

Director of Advocacy | Platform Communications

Nathan Conrad works with stakeholders, elected officials and opinion leaders on a myriad of topics throughout Wisconsin and beyond as the director of advocacy for Platform Communications, which is a Madison-based strategic communications firm. Conrad’s previous work includes leading the communications efforts for the Wisconsin Republican Party during the 2012 election year and later serving as communications director for the Public Service Commission of Wisconsin.

President and CEO | Exact Sciences

Since Conroy joined the company in 2009, Madison-based Exact Sciences has grown to more than 2,500 employees thanks to its signature product, Cologuard, a noninvasive colorectal cancer screening test used more than 2.5 million times.

Podcast Host | With Friends Like These

Ana Marie Cox launched “With Friends Like These” on Crooked Media in 2017, but she has a long list of other media credits, including being the founding editor of the political blog Wonkette, writing the “Talk” column for The New York Times Magazine and blogging for The Guardian. She was also the senior political correspondent for MTV News from 2016 until they pivoted to video.

Professor | UW-Madison

Katherine Cramer is a political scientist whose 2016 book “The Politics of Resentment: Rural Consciousness in Wisconsin and the rise of Scott Walker” brought her wide recognition. She is now working with the nonprofit Cortico on Local Voices Network, a national effort to improve civic discourse.

Associate Professor | UW-Madison

Kathleen Bartzen Culver is the James E. Burgess Chair in Journalism Ethics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Journalism & Mass Communication and director of the Center for Journalism Ethics. Long interested in the implications of digital media on journalism and public interest communication, Culver focuses on the ethical dimensions of social tools, technological advances and networked information.

Executive Editor | Cap Times

Katie Dean became executive editor of the Cap Times this year. She started work there in 2007 as a reporter, then co-launched and edited the paper’s arts and culture publication, 77 Square.

Chief Talent Management Officer | Old National Bank

Carrie Ellspermann has responsibility for recruitment, talent development and management at Old Nationa, as well as leadership development, succession planning, and organizational development. Prior to her current role, she served as president of Old National wealth management for approximately 12 years. She joined the company in 2001 as senior vice president and manager of the corporate private client group.

Capitol Bureau Chief | WKOW-TV

Emilee Fannon joined WKOW in 2018 as its’ Capitol Bureau Chief from Springfield, Illinois, where she was a statehouse reporter for three years. Her highlights while covering Illinois politics included the rise and fall of the longest budget impasse in modern day history as well as an historic school funding reform.

Reporter | Cap Times

Katelyn Ferral is The Cap Times’ public affairs and investigative reporter. She joined the paper in 2015 and previously covered the energy industry for the Pittsburgh Tribune Review.

Director | Marquette University Law School Poll

The poll, which Franklin leads in addition to serving as a professor of law and public policy at the university, is the most widely followed effort of its kind in Wisconsin, monitoring trends in politics and other matters of public policy.

Actor and Director

Marti Gobel is a Milwaukee based actor, director and teaching artist. A proud member of the Actors Equity Association and the Screen Actors Guild‐American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, Gobel speaks frequently and passionately on the need for increased diversity in the arts.

Treasurer | State of Wisconsin

Sarah Godlewski was elected as the Wisconsin State Treasurer in 2018. Originally from Eau Claire, she is a co-founder of MaSa Impact, a social-impact investment venture that funds and works with entrepreneurs to build successful start-ups that will make a difference. She is passionate about removing the gender gap in business, and is a founding member of WE Capital, which provides financial capital to female entrepreneurs.

Science Writer | UW-Madison

Eric Hamilton is a science writer at UW–Madison, where he shares the value of the university’s research with the wider world. Before joining the university, Eric trained as a plant scientist and was a science reporter intern at the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.

Judge (retired) | Wisconsin Court of Appeals

Paul Higginbotham served on the Wisconsin Court of Appeals from 2003 until 2017, the first and still only African American to do so. From 1994 until 2003, he was a Dane County District Court judge.

Social Impact Investment Director | American Family Insurance Institute for Corporate and Social Impact

At American Family’s newly launched institute, Joy Ippolito supports investments in healthy youth development. She has more than 18 years of policy, research, and graduate teaching experience in urban education, juvenile justice, and supporting healthy families and communities. Ippolito worked at the University of Chicago’s Chapin Hall research and policy institute before moving to Madison, WI in 2016 to become Wisconsin’s first Anti-Human Trafficking Coordinator. She came to Madison in 2016 to become Wisconsin’s first anti-human trafficking coordinator.

Managing Director | Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation

Erik Iverson oversees WARF, an organization that has supported scientific research within the UW–Madison community for more than 90 years. It partners with university researchers on patenting and licensing their discoveries and then providing grants back to the UW to continue that cycle of innovation. Prior to joining WARF in 2016, Iverson served as a lead executive at the Infectious Disease Research Institute and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, both located in Seattle.

Partner | HealthX Ventures

Taha Jangda is a partner at HealthX Ventures, a Madison-based venture capital firm that focuses on health care startups. Prior to joining HealthX, Jangda was the director of strategic partnerships at Redox and earlier helped create the Texas Medical Center Innovation Institute.

Senator, R-Wisconsin | U.S. Senate

Ronald Harold Johnson is the senior U.S. senator from Wisconsin and a member of the Republican Party. Prior to his election to the Senate in 2010, he was chief executive officer of PACUR LLC, a polyester and plastics manufacturer.

Actor

Loryn Jonelis is a stage and film actor with a mild background in dance. He likes sharks, the color green, and teaching.

City Editor | Cap Times

Jason Joyce joined the Cap Times in 2013 and became the city editor this year. Before that, he led the digital media efforts at Madison’s Isthmus.

Junior | St. Andrews High School

In addition to being a high school student in Delaware, Matthew Kijowski is a member of the advisory board for the Social Media and Adolescent Health Research Team at UW-Madison. He is currently investigating attitudes toward vaping as revealed by YouTube videos.

Executive Director | Women’s Suffrage Centennial Commission

The commission is charged with the nationwide commemoration of the constitutional amendment that gave women the right to vote. Wisconsin was the first state to ratify the amendment in 1919. Rebecca Kleefisch was twice elected lieutenant governor of the state as a Republican, first in 2010 and again in 2014.

Co-Founder | Monkey Business Institute

Brad Knight is a co-founder of the popular Madison improvisational comedy troupe. He has endured many horrific events in his life. He was the sole survivor of the famous Cinnamon Toast Crunch Fire of ’73 and lost his duodenum to a freak meteor strike in ’81. He is living proof that Comedy = Tragedy + Time.

Cartoonist

From 1978 to 1980 Mike Konopacki drew daily editorial cartoons for the Madison Press Connection, a strike newspaper that played an important role in the story of the “H-Bomb Secret.” In 1983 Konopacki and Gary Huck of Racine created Huck/Konopacki Labor Cartoons. Konopacki’s work appears regularly in the Cap Times and he is the co-author and illustrator of Howard Zinn’s graphic history “A People’s History of American Empire.”

Executive Editor | The Gazette

Zack Kucharski leads the newsroom of The Gazette in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, known for creating the Iowa Ideas conference, now in its third year. The Gazette also participates in the Trusting News project, a foundation-funded journalism effort to study and combat distrust of mainstream media.

Executive Director | Black Leaders Organizing for Communities

A native of Milwaukee, Angela Lang’s works with BLOC to uplift the voice of the Black community and increase civic engagement. Before then, she was the political director with For Our Future Wisconsin, where she worked to develop partnerships with local organizations and oversee the local grant process.

Investigative Reporter | Washington Post

Carol Leonnig is an investigative reporter who has worked at the Post since 2000. She was won the Pulitzer Prize three times, most recently as part of a Post team that wrote about Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election and President Trump’s efforts to stymie a federal investigation of his campaign’s ties to Russia. In 2015, her work revealing the misconduct and failures of the Secret Service that had compromised President Obama’s security won Leonnig the Pulitzer for national reporting.

Chair | Wisconsin Technical College System Board

Becky Levzow is a dairy farmer from Rio, Wisconsin. In partnership with her husband, Ralph, and son, Kenneth, they operate Levzow Dairy, milking 180 cows and tilling 900 acres. Levzow also chairs the Wisconsin Technical College System Board, sits on the University of Wisconsin Board of Regents, serves on the Pardeeville School Board and is secretary of the Dairy Farmers of Wisconsin.

Editor | The Progressive

Bill Lueders is editor of The Progressive magazine, having previously worked at Isthmus and the Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism. He is president of the Wisconsin Freedom of Information Council, which works to protect public access to meetings and records.

Columnist | The New York Times

Farhad Manjoo became an opinion columnist for The New York Times in 2018. Before that, he wrote The Times’ State of the Art column, covering the technology industry’s efforts to swallow up the world. Manjoo has also written for Slate, Salon, Fast Company and The Wall Street Journal. To his chagrin, his 2008 book, “True Enough: Learning to Live in a Post-Fact World,” accurately predicted our modern age of tech-abetted echo chambers and “alternative facts.”

Troupe Member | Monkey Business Institute

Kelly Maxwell is a writer/actor/graphic artist with Madison theater collective Are We Delicious?; a writer/director of two Broom Street Theater productions — “Held: A Musical Fantasy” and “Playscapes”; and a singer with Madison band The Fauxtons.

President | Wisconsin Union Directorate Society and Politics

Jacob McInnis heads up the Union’s group devoted to current events. He is a junior at UW-Madison majoring in applied economics with an environmental concentration.

Professor | UW-Madison

Dr. Megan Moreno. a professor of pediatrics, is principal investigator of the Social Media and Adolescent Health Research Team. Her research focuses on the intersection of technology and adolescent health. She is a member of the American Academy of Pediatrics’ Council on Communication and Media, and was the lead author on the 2016 policy statement “Media Use in School-Aged Children and Adolescents.”

Journalist

Before becoming briefly famous for his role in The Progressive’s censorship case, Howard Morland was a civil rights activist, Air Force transport pilot, anti-war protester, surfer and graduate student. Arrested at the 1977 Seabrook Nuclear Power Plant protest, Morland decided to focus on bombs — made by the hidden half of the nuclear industry. The Progressive had the same ambition. Morland’s second article for the magazine, “The H-Bomb Secret,” was tied up in court for most of 1979.

Director | Race to Equity Project

Before working with Race to Equity, Erica Nelson practiced public interest law for three years in New York City, representing low-income families involved in the child welfare system in Manhattan Family Court.

Associate Editor | Cap Times

In addition to his work as an opinion columnist at the Cap Times, John Nichols is the author of several books about politics and the media, including “Horsemen of the Trumpocalypse.” He writes about electoral politics and public policy for The Nation magazine.

Managing Attorney | Community Immigration Law Center

At the law center in Madison, Aissa Olivarez focuses on representing local community members detained by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. She received her law degree from the University of Wisconsin Law School in 2016, and grew up in the Rio Grande Valley, where her strong passion for immigrant rights began.

Reporter | Cap Times

Jessie Opoien coverd state government and politics for the Cap Times as a reporter and now servies as the company’s opinon editor, writing a weekly column.

Chair | Democratic National Committee

Prior to becoming chair of the Democratic Party’s governing body in 2017, Tom Perez was labor secretary under President Barack Obama from 2013 to 2017, and he was the assistant U.S. attorney general for civil rights before that. Earlier in his career, he was special counsel to U.S. Sen. Ted Kennedy, D-Massachusetts, advising him on civil rights and criminal justice issues.

Columnist | Washington Post

Alexandra Petri offers a lighter take on the news and opinions of the day for the Post. She won the National Press Club Angele Gingras Award for Humor Writing in 2016, and she is the author of “A Field Guide to Awkward Silences.”

Reporter | Cap Times

Briana Reilly joined the Cap Times in 2019 to cover state politics. Previously, she worked for wispolitics.com.

Mayor | City of Madison

Satya Rhodes-Conway was elected Madison’s mayor in April 2019, defeating long-serving incumbent Paul Soglin. Prior to her election, she worked for nearly 14 years as the managing director of the Mayors Innovation Project, a learning network for mayors nationwide. She also served on Madison’s city council for six years.

Member | Voces de la Frontera

Since arriving in Madison in 2018, Alejandro Salazar has been a member of Voces de la Frontera, an immigrant workers center that is a voice for immigration reform. Previously he lived in New Orleans, where he helped rebuild the city after the disasters wrought by Hurricane Katrina. There he was a member of the Congress of Day Laborers, which provides advice and support to reconstruction workers.

State Rep., D-Madison

Melissa Sargent was first elected to the Assembly in 2012, representing a district on Madison’s north and east sides. She has authored and advocated for several proposals (none so far successful) that would make marijuana legal in Wisconsin for medical and recreational uses.

Troupe Member | Monkey Business Institute

Jess Schuknecht has been an improvisational comedy performer for over 20 years. He loves improv because it lets him scratch a bunch of itches at the same time — creativity, stories, following the fear of not knowing what’s coming and helping others in whatever ways he can.

Artist | Arts + Literature Laboratory

Mallory Shotwell is an interdisciplinary artist, curator, and early childhood specialist at Arts + Literature Laboratory in Madison. In her art practice, she works with storytelling/interview, audio, photography, and video to share stories based on a theme. She is particularly interested in the accessibility of art as an interactive/sensorial experience.

Musicians

Leotha and Tamera Stanley bring their soulful talents to the reception that closes Cap Times Idea Fest 2019. Leotha is an acclaimed gospel pianist and Tamera brings a big voice that will make your feet move!

State Rep., D-Madison

Shelia Stubbs was first elected to the Wisconsin Assembly in 2018 and is the first African American to represent Dane County in the Legislature. Her district includes Madison’s west and south sides. She serves on the Assembly’s committees on Colleges & Universities, Corrections, Insurance, Insurance, Criminal Justice and Public Safety and State Affairs. Before her election to the State Assembly, Stubbs served on the Dane County board for 12 years.

Drama Advisor

Kathleen Tissot has been involved both on and off stage with various Madison area theatre groups over the past 20+ years, and she was the speech pathologist and drama advisor/play director at Oregon High School for 15 of those years. While at the high school, she developed a social skills program for students on the autism spectrum and strived for inclusivity in the theatre/drama program. She most recently directed “The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time” for Strollers Theatre.

Associate Professor | UW-Madison

Catalina Toma works in the university’s Department of Communication Arts, where she studies relationships in the age of social media.

Chef and Founder | Union Hmong Kitchen

Born in Thailand in a refugee camp, Yia Vang came to Wisconsin at age 5 and eventually made his way to the Twin Cities, where he founded Union Hmong Kitchen, a pop-up restaurant that features Hmong culture, stories, rituals and flavors.

Shareholder | Godfrey & Kahn

Brady Williamson is a constitutional and corporate litigator who taught periodically at the University of Wisconsin Law School for more than 25 years. Beginning in October 2017, he has served as the court-appointed fee examiner in the PROMESA reorganization proceedings for the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico. In 1979, he was among the attorneys who represented The Progressive magazine after the U.S. government moved to suppress the publication of “The H-Bomb Secret.”