and that’s what I’m going to spend my time driving” at WARF, he says. “At the Gates Foundation, I was involved in everything from agriculture to information technology to mobile-based technologies. My hope is to understand the technologies coming out of the university and determine how they can best be translated into a commercial product that benefits the user, and the state of Wisconsin.”
In December, Xconomy was first to report that Gulbrandsen would delay his retirement several months because WARF’s search for a new leader was taking longer than planned. UW-Madison announced last April that Gulbrandsen would be stepping down.
The foundation’s endowment has grown to $2.6 billion (as of June 30) from about $1.4 billion in 2000. In 2014, WARF gave $100 million to UW-Madison—the state’s largest academic research university—and the Morgridge Institute for Research, money that helps fund faculty and staff salaries, grants, research partnerships, student fellowships, equipment purchases, and more.
