2024 Alumni Awards

Andy Manis

Abby Kursel ’14 Partner, gener8tor UW Major: Marketing

Maggie Brickerman ’08 Partner, gener8tor UW Major: Political Science capital investment and have created more than 11,000 jobs in various industries across the country, with a significant number in the Midwest and Deep South. For the past year, Kursel and Brickerman have been focusing their attention specifically on Wisconsin’s startup and venture-capital network, which is consistent with the regional strategy gener8tor designed to support entrepreneurs and investors committed to starting, growing, and investing in businesses in their particular state. “We’ve built gener8tor — and our careers — on the idea that Wisconsin has everything it takes to create jobs, to create wealth,” says Brickerman. “Our companies weren’t getting investment from other places, [but] we have the innovation and the genius here. We’ve proven it through fund returns, and people should not hesitate to bet on that with us.”

In 2014, fellow Badgers Troy Vosseller ’10 and Joe Kirgues ’08 hired Abby Kursel (above left) and Maggie Brickerman (above right) as the first two employees of a new startup accelerator they’d founded. The two are now equity partners at gener8tor, which has grown into one of the highest-ranked startup accelerators nationwide, with more than 75 programs, 130 employees, and a presence in 46 cities in three countries. Early on, the two women were tasked with creating and managing the company’s gBETA accelerator. They worked with clients such as two UW–Madison seniors who turned a class project into a thriving sleep-lab data company. Kursel and Brickerman then worked their way up the ladder by leading gener8tor’s primary investment accelerator program. In total, more than 1,400 participating startups have together raised more than $2.3 billion in

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