UW Majors: English, Communications, Law
President and CEO, Data Recognition Corporation
Susan Engeleiter grew up in a family with two traditions: rooting for Wisconsin sports teams and getting involved in local politics. Her great-great grandfather had been the mayor of Milwaukee, and her family regularly volunteered on various campaigns, and so walking into the state capitol and asking to become a legislative page during her freshman year at UW–Madison felt like a perfectly natural thing to do.
However, the clerk in charge claimed he couldn’t hire her because he didn’t have any page uniforms designed for women. Undaunted, Engeleiter kept pestering until the clerk finally relented, and she and a friend became the first two female pages at the Wisconsin legislature. For the rest of her undergraduate days, Engeleiter spent up to 30 hours a week at the capitol. “I loved the work. It was fascinating,” she says.
Engeleiter had originally planned to become a high-school speech and theater teacher after college, but during her senior year, the assemblyman from her home county decided not to seek reelection. Engeleiter jumped at the chance to run, and she spent the summer after graduation knocking on 12,000 doors across Waukesha County. In 1974, she won in an eight-way Republican primary and subsequently beat a 19-year-old opponent in the general election by joking that, at 22, she offered more experience than the other candidate.
Her victory made her the youngest woman elected to a state legislature anywhere in the country that year, but the page-turned-politician already felt right at home in the capitol. She also returned to the UW as a law student, selecting courses that fit around her legislative responsibilities. Engeleiter was elected to the state senate after her term in the assembly, and in 1984, she became the first woman to serve as its minority leader. In 1989, President George H. W. Bush nominated her to become the first woman to lead the Small Business Administration.
In 1992, she became a vice president at Honeywell in Minneapolis and then shifted to Data Recognition Corporation, an educational testing firm that is an industry leader for pre-K–12, adult education, and multilingual learner assessments. Engeleiter was named CEO in 2006. “I personally benefited greatly from a very fine, quality public education, kindergarten through law school,” she says. “I strongly believe in public education.”
Diana Hess, former dean of the UW–Madison School of Education, says, “Susan’s commitment to education has been unwavering. She has made an enormous impact on the School of Education community, providing robust scholarship support across the arts, health, and education as well as supporting hundreds of future Wisconsin teachers.”
Engeleiter has also served on the boards of various nonprofits, and currently serves on the Wisconsin Foundation & Alumni Association (WFAA) and the Eisenhower Health Board of Trustees in southern California. She also served as the national chair and in other leadership positions at the Hazelden Betty Ford Foundation, the largest organization in the country for treating substance abuse. Past board affiliations include Blue Cross Blue Shield of Minnesota and Aurora Health Care.
The competitive spirit Engeleiter once directed into politics is now channeled into the Wisconsin sports teams she still loves. She enjoys attending Badger football and basketball games, and one of her golden retrievers is named Lambeau in honor of the Green Bay Packers’ playing field. She’s also an avid fan of the Milwaukee Bucks and dreams of someday watching her home team face off in the finals against the Minnesota Timberwolves.
