Alumni Awards

Alexander Gee ’85 Melissa Austin Alumn WISCONSIN ALU Major: Biotechnology CEO and Managing Director, South Loop Ventures Zachary Ellis Jr. MS’13 Rocky Kneten Shalicia Johnson/Arrowstar Major: Nursing Registered Nurse, UW Health Jessi Kendall ’14

Luminary Award

The Luminary Award recognizes alumni who serve as aspirational examples for others through their accomplishments in the areas of leadership, discovery, progress, and service. It celebrates extraordinary Badgers who have demonstrated exceptional achievement in their professions, service or philanthropy.

Majors: African American Studies, Economics Founder and CEO, The Center for Black Excellence and Culture / Founder and President, Nehemiah Center for Urban Leadership Development Alexander Gee has spent a lifetime advocating on behalf of the Black community. Soon, his biggest project to date will open its doors: the landmark Center for Black Excellence and Culture, located on Madison’s south side. The Center will include a theater, a recording studio, an art gallery, a coworking space, a wellness space, a children’s education center, a senior space, and more. Gee was six when his mother moved the family from Chicago to Madison to complete her bachelor’s and master’s degrees on campus. He followed in her footsteps, enrolling in UW– Madison in 1981. As a teenager, he was already a lay preacher for a “living-room congregation” that eventually grew into Madison’s Fountain of Life Church, where he is now lead pastor. After working in a series of UW–Madison positions related to student services and minority recruitment, Gee left to found the Nehemiah Center, which aims to empower Black families and support formerly incarcerated men. In 2018, Gee launched the award-winning Black Like Me podcast to showcase other Black leaders and offer non-Black allies an honest peek into race relations in America. “We’ve got to be able to dig into whatever Black people have dug into for the last 400 years in this country that’s allowed us to survive,” Gee says. “That’s each other, our stories of resilience, and our rich culture.”

When Jessi Kendall started nursing school as a returning adult student in 2009, she was working full-time, her mother-in-law had recently been diagnosed with cancer, and she was pregnant. Yet those challenges also gave her an unusual empathy. “I already knew that a person’s diagnoses aren’t all of who they are,” she says. “I learned that you don’t have to give up joy just because you’re sick.” After graduation, her compassion made her stand out at her first nursing job at UW Health. She was tapped to become a diversity resource nurse and underwent additional training to become an advocate for patients of color. Kendall’s struggles with mental-health challenges gave her even more empathy. As a teenager growing up in Madison, she battled depression but attempted to muscle through college as a student in New Orleans. Eventually, she came home to rest and heal. She became a restaurant server and learned how to both talk and listen to a wide range of people, especially older adults, and her interest in working in health care began to blossom. Kendall has been actively involved in various initiatives in and outside of UW Health to recruit more Black nurses into the profession. Additionally, she founded Nursing Needs You, an independent organization to support aspiring and early-career Black nurses. “Nursing Needs You is a guilt-free zone,” she says. “It doesn’t matter how long and twisted your road to nursing has been. Everything that brought you here will make you better able to help someone who needs you.”

After leaving the U.S. Navy as an officer in 2006, Zachary Ellis was working as a corporate consultant and struggling to find a bridge into venture capital. An acquaintance encouraged him to accept a job at the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation (WARF). There he worked closely with both investors and start-ups to negotiate tech licensing deals. He also launched WARF’s first accelerator program dedicated to women and entrepreneurs of color. At the same time, he enrolled in the UW–Madison School of Medicine and Public Health’s biotechnology University, and Rev1 Ventures, Ellis launched and led a venture capital fund for Black and Brown tech founders based in Houston, Texas. The murder of George Floyd in 2020 prompted him to reevaluate his career, and he realized that he wanted to make diversity efforts a primary focus. So in 2022, he launched his own fund, South Loop Ventures, where he aims to level the playing field in tech entrepreneurship by investing exclusively in underrepresented founders of color. “I know many very talented Black, Latino, and female professionals who are highly educated and accomplished but just don’t get the benefit of the doubt to operate in the tech community,” he says. “I know we have just as much potential to succeed if given the same grace, context, connections, and access to capital as our counterparts.” program, which prepares graduates to commercialize life sciences products. After stints at PepsiCo, Ohio State

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LUMINARY AWARD // 11