Who is Mary Burke? - Shepard Express article
By - Louis Fortis and Lisa Kaiser
With just a year to go before the 2014 gubernatorial election, one Democrat, Mary Burke, a Dane County businesswoman and former head of the Department of Commerce, has just publicly declared that she will be the one who will take on Republican Gov. Scott Walker.
Burke is almost the polar opposite of Walker. While the governor never finished college, Burke graduated from Georgetown and earned a Master of Business Administration degree from Harvard. Walker spent just a brief time in the private sector before running for office; Burke set up her own business with a partner after getting her MBA and later became a top executive at Trek Bicycle, the Waterloo-based company her father co-founded. While at Trek, she oversaw the sales and distribution of its bicycles in Europe, where she launched seven new sales offices. In just three years she increased Trek’s European sales from $3 million annually to $50 million a year. And while Walker’s Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation (WEDC) is riddled with problems—including not collecting on the loans it made to businesses and spurring very weak job growth—the Department of Commerce under Burke helped to support entrepreneurs and small businesses and when she left her position the state had 84,000 more jobs than it does currently and a 4.8% unemployment rate.
Burke, now a member of the Madison school board and a philanthropist most closely linked to the Boys & Girls Club of Dane County, officially declared on Monday that she is running for governor.
When she visited the Shepherd’s offices last week she hadn’t yet thrown her hat in the ring but it was clear that she would be a very credible challenger to Walker who can draw on her success in the private, public and nonprofit sectors and her deep interest in education and improving Wisconsin’s business climate. As a top business leader who worked abroad, she understands that without great education for our young people, Wisconsin will never achieve the economic growth we need in our global economy.
http://expressmilwaukee.com/article-21926-who-is-mary-burke-.html
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