wisconsin
(9)
Wolter
The Wisconsin forklift dealer that turned a garage full of spare parts into a thirteen-state material handling empire - one acquisition at a time.
Fleet Farm
Fleet Farm is a Midwestern big-box retail chain founded in 1955 that sells farm and ranch supplies, hunting and fishing gear, automotive parts, hardware, lawn and garden, pet supplies, clothing, footwear, toys and groceries under one roof. Headquartered in Appleton, Wisconsin, it runs roughly 50 stores across Minnesota, Wisconsin, Iowa, North and South Dakota - most paired with an auto service center, gas mart and car wash - plus a growing e-commerce operation. Known for its orange-roofed silo storefronts and the tagline 'Built for real life,' the company serves rural and outdoor customers who want everyday-value one-stop shopping.
Kohl's
Kohl's is one of the largest department store chains in the United States, operating roughly 1,100 off-mall stores across 49 states plus Kohls.com. Founded in Wisconsin, it sells moderately priced apparel, footwear, accessories, beauty, and home goods to value-conscious families, anchored by its Kohl's Cash and Kohl's Rewards loyalty programs. In recent years it has leaned on partnerships - hosting Sephora shops inside its stores and accepting Amazon returns - to drive traffic while working to reverse a multi-year sales decline.
Fork Farms
Fork Farms is a mission-first agriculture technology company in Green Bay, Wisconsin that builds self-contained indoor vertical hydroponic systems - led by the Flex Farm - paired with a digital platform (Farmative) and K-12 curriculum. Its technology lets schools, hospitals, nonprofits, food pantries, businesses and homes grow hundreds of pounds of fresh produce per year on-site using a fraction of the water and land of conventional agriculture, turning food access into something anyone can do indoors.
Tom Dean
Tom Dean is the co-founder, President and CEO of Renaissant, a Milwaukee-based logistics technology company building a voice-enabled, agentic AI operating system for warehouse yards and loading docks. A former Ernst & Young auditor turned hedge fund trader and investment manager, Dean pivoted Renaissant from a building-security platform into freight tech, raised a $5 million Series A in 2024, and now runs software across roughly 130 sites that talks to truck drivers in their own language to speed check-ins, deter cargo theft, and cut idle time.
Angela Rachidi
Angela Rachidi is a senior fellow and the Rowe Scholar in opportunity and mobility studies at the American Enterprise Institute, where she studies poverty and how federal safety-net programs shape the lives of low-income Americans. A former New York City welfare official turned think-tank scholar, she has become one of Washington's most-cited voices on SNAP, the Child Tax Credit, child care, and the link between work and poverty - testifying repeatedly before Congress and arguing that programs should pull families toward employment and self-sufficiency, not away from it. A Lancaster, Wisconsin native and four-time all-conference college softball player, she runs her own research firm and works from Middleton, Wisconsin.
Charlie Sykes
Charlie Sykes spent 23 years as one of Wisconsin's most influential conservative talk-radio voices, then walked away and turned his fire on his own movement. He co-founded The Bulwark, became a fixture of the Never Trump opposition, and now writes the Substack newsletter and hosts the podcast 'To the Contrary.' Author of nine books and an MSNBC contributor, he is a rare media figure who publicly reckoned with the part talk radio played in remaking the American right.
Pranay Kapadia
Pranay Kapadia is the Co-Founder and CEO of Notable, an AI-powered automation platform for healthcare that eliminates administrative burden for clinicians and health systems. Founded in 2017 after dinner-table conversations with six physician family members - including his psychiatrist wife who called herself 'the highest paid data collector in the world' - Notable has grown to serve 32 million patients across 12,000 sites of care, raised $119.2M in funding including a $100M Series B in 2021, and now automates over one million repetitive healthcare workflows daily. Before Notable, Kapadia helped build Mint.com at Intuit and was on the founding team at Blend, the mortgage fintech unicorn.
Katie Harbath
Katie Harbath is the founder and CEO of Anchor Change and Chief Global Affairs Officer at Duco Experts, widely known as the 'election whisperer to the tech industry' (Foreign Policy). After a decade at Facebook building the global elections policy team from scratch - eventually managing 60 people across 40+ countries - she left in 2021 to launch her own consulting firm and newsletter. Her weekly Substack 'Anchor Change' and podcast help readers and clients navigate the chaos at the intersection of technology, politics, and democracy, guided by her signature philosophy: panic responsibly.