Executive Director and CEO
Mike supervises and controls all of the business and affairs of the corporation. Responsibilities include managing, planning, directing, administering and evaluating all components of the Ice Age Trail Alliance programs, staff and volunteers.
Mike joined the Alliance staff in July 2007 as executive director. Before that, Mike traces his volunteer service to the Alliance back to the early 1990s: he spent time behind a mower along Ice Age Trail segments in Washington and Waukesha counties. His volunteer service increased substantially with the inaugural Mobile Skills Crew program in 2002. A term on the Board of Directors, including a brief stint as President, rounded out his service before he stepped aside to accept his current position.
Mike is professionally and personally invested in the mission of the Ice Age Trail Alliance and its five core programs: Trail, Lands, Outreach & Education, Philanthropy, and Communications. These programs are the pillars of success on which the Ice Age Trail Alliance will continue to grow as a conservation organization of national significance.
Before joining the Alliance staff, Mike’s career included partial ownership and 35 years of experience managing the retail division of his family’s specialty sports retail business and a few years each in the insurance and recycling business.
Mike has devoted his professional life to fun and Wisconsin – a point of pride to him. Mike graduated with a BA in marketing from UW-Milwaukee in 1975. He met and married his wife Barbara on the Ice Age Trail and instilled the passion of the Trail in his two daughters and five grandchildren.