Entrepreneur award winners turn ideas into impact — from farming to fashion to fusion

The College of Wisconsin–Madison Workplace of the Chancellor, in partnership with the Wisconsin Basis and Alumni Affiliation, immediately acknowledged Marcus Carpenter, Heather Hasson, and Greg Piefer as recipients of the 2025 Chancellor’s Entrepreneurial Achievement Award.

“What unites this yr’s excellent honorees isn’t what they do — it’s why they do it,” stated Chancellor Jennifer L. Mnookin. “Every has taken a definite path into entrepreneurship, but all are pushed by the identical objective: to enhance lives and develop alternative. That’s the Wisconsin Concept in motion.”

Established in 2011, the Chancellor’s Entrepreneurial Achievement Award acknowledges UW–Madison innovators and alumni who’ve contributed to financial development and the social good, serving as entrepreneurial fashions for the UW neighborhood and provoking the campus tradition of entrepreneurship.

Meet this yr’s honorees:

Marcus Carpenter ’00

Founder, Route 1, Twin Cities, Minnesota

As a fullback for the Badgers, Marcus Carpenter as soon as ran performs on the sphere. Now he’s making certain better entry to fields for farmers all through Minnesota and past.

Because the founding father of Route 1, a Minnesota-based useful resource hub for Black, Brown, and Indigenous farmers, Carpenter helps farmers domesticate worthwhile agricultural enterprises and gives assist in land acquisition, agribanking, gear entry, and farm-share distribution — all whereas additionally addressing meals insecurity in communities that almost all want entry to recent meals.

“Route 1 isn’t just about meals manufacturing,” Carpenter stated. “It’s about neighborhood therapeutic, generational wealth, and fairness in a system that hasn’t all the time welcomed people who seem like me.”

Carpenter’s ardour is rooted in household historical past: his great-grandfather owned the biggest Black-owned farm in Poinsett County, Arkansas and the corporate title, Route 1, is an homage to the one highway that related the homes, farms, and even church buildings of his great-grandparents’ 18 kids – and nonetheless connects their kids’s kids.

Immediately, Carpenter’s model of Route 1 companions with organizations just like the USDA, The Toro Firm Basis, and the Bush Basis to attach farmers of colour with important sources whereas bringing recent, regionally grown produce to underserved communities dealing with meals insecurity.

A former fullback in the course of the Badgers’ back-to-back Rose Bowl run within the late Nineteen Nineties, Carpenter holds levels in sociology and behavioral sciences and legislation, with a certificates in felony justice. He has led strategic initiatives at corporations starting from the NBA to Philip Morris USA, and was named one of many High 50 Black Leaders to Know in Minneapolis–St. Paul by the Enterprise Journal in 2024.

Carpenter proudly sports activities his Badger gear wherever he goes as a result of his UW–Madison expertise continues to gasoline his mission. “Being a part of the Badger neighborhood has granted me entry to an intensive community of people that share my ardour to influence individuals and create optimistic change,” he says. “Wherever I am going, I proudly show the ‘W’.”

Heather Hasson ’04

CEO & Co-Founder, OOG.Well being; Co-Founder & Govt Chair, FIGS, Santa Monica, California

It began with a cup of espresso.

Heather Hasson was catching up with a good friend—a doctor assistant — who described working lengthy, grueling shifts in scrubs that had been boxy, scratchy, and ill-fitting, with the dimensions printed in brilliant orange on the exterior of the collar. She was horrified. Whereas designers catered to athletes and athleisure followers, the healthcare professionals she idolized had been utterly missed.

She determined to rectify that oversight. With a background in trend as a former purse designer, Hasson launched FIGS in 2013 and got down to revolutionize the healthcare attire trade for individuals she frequently refers to as “Superior People.”

It didn’t take lengthy. By 2021, FIGS was valued at greater than $5 billion and have become the primary firm led by two feminine co-founders to go public.

“Her entire ethos is ‘create the world you wish to dwell in,” FIGS co-founder Trina Spear stated. “She has infinite concepts to make change and make a distinction, and it’s simply so inspiring to be round that.”

Hasson is each bit as a lot of a philanthropist as she is an entrepreneur. FIGS donates scrubs to clinicians in under-resourced communities across the globe (greater than 325,000 units and $500,000 in 2024 alone) and to medical professionals throughout disasters in the US as effectively. Throughout Covid-19, FIGS made KN95 masks accessible freed from cost on its web site for front-line staff. And lengthy earlier than Hasson broke into healthcare attire, she was making certain youngsters in Africa and Vietnam had the uniforms required so they might attend college.

Immediately, FIGS additionally frequently advocates on behalf of healthcare staff on Capitol Hill, and Hasson’s newest enterprise, OOG.Well being, is a unbroken training platform that helps busy healthcare professionals earn the credit they should keep present by using AI within the analysis course of. It, like all the things else she does, is designed to enhance the standard of life for her “heroes.”

“She’s very keen about Wisconsin and really passionate in regards to the Badgers,” Spear stated. “She is one in every of a form. I feel her time at UW–Madison helped her achieve confidence in her personal talents and her personal views and actually chart her personal path.”

A UW–Madison political science graduate, Hasson was not too long ago acknowledged as one of many Most Distinctive Entrepreneurs on the 2024 Builders and Innovators Summit, a high 100 Most Intriguing Entrepreneurs by Goldman Sachs’ in 2018 and 2019, and Ernst & Younger’s 2018 Entrepreneur of the Yr. She has additionally obtained UW–Madison’s Ahead beneath 40 Award and been honored as Inc. Journal’s High 100 Feminine Founders.

Greg Piefer ’99, MS’04, PhD’06

Founder & CEO, SHINE Applied sciences, Janesville, Wisconsin

Simply down the highway from UW–Madison, Greg Piefer is quietly constructing one of the vital formidable vitality corporations on this planet.

In Janesville, a metropolis now identified for atomic particles in addition to auto components, Greg Piefer’s SHINE Applied sciences is advancing leading edge options for healthcare, clear vitality, and nationwide safety — all by nuclear fusion. However that’s solely the start. Piefer’s final objective? Inexpensive and sustainable fusion vitality.

“He’s motivated by making a distinction,” former Speaker of the Home Paul Ryan stated. “And due to him, Janesville is serving a better objective in that we’re fixing lots of society’s large issues.”

Motivation like Piefer’s doesn’t simply seem. It’s born of relentless curiosity. He was the child along with his nostril in a guide, even at recess. He was particularly obsessive about house journey, vitality era and different high-tech human frontiers.

At UW–Madison, that focus crystalized into objective. He would frequently watch practice automobiles carrying heaps of black coal rumble previous, destined for the campus heating plant. He knew there was a greater method. Only some of those self same automobiles, stuffed with fusion gasoline, might energy your entire nation with no hostile local weather impacts. The query was how.

Piefer was undaunted. “I needed to play a direct position in creating that future,” he stated. “I’ve all the time been a dreamer. I’ve all the time believed we are able to do actually exhausting issues. And I’ve all the time tended to see the trail ahead versus the difficulties.”

That path began first, as all nice discoveries do, with a query. It grew to become an experiment that morphed into Piefer’s graduate analysis. Lastly, he perfected the processes and spun off his innovations into an organization. Immediately, SHINE has greater than 300 workers and makes use of fusion-based expertise initially patented by the Wisconsin Alumni Analysis Basis.

Piefer and SHINE are presently targeted on a four-phase technique to first commercialize near-term applied sciences on the best way to producing fusion vitality: industrial neutron testing to examine aerospace and protection parts; medical isotope manufacturing to deal with international shortages of supplies utilized in most cancers and cardiac care; nuclear waste recycling to scale back environmental and safety dangers; and in the end, producing clear, considerable and inexpensive fusion vitality.

With latest federal grants and personal funding, Piefer is nearer than ever to that long-ago imaginative and prescient he had as a UW–Madison graduate scholar to heal, shield and energy the world with sustainable vitality.

He’s nonetheless pushed by curiosity, but additionally by an “pleasure to stage up humanity.”

“That’s at least the chance we’ve,” he stated. “These phrases are usually not too large. And I feel it’s going to be exhausting. [But] I see an organization that has a extremely superior tradition and that’s offering actual worth. We’re wanting backward on the worth we created whereas wanting ahead, too, at what’s subsequent and with enthusiasm for a greater world.”

With greater than 20 years of expertise in commercializing scientific breakthroughs, Piefer holds a number of patents and three UW–Madison levels — together with a PhD in nuclear engineering and engineering physics with a minor in medical physics.

“We’ve chosen a few of the most troublesome issues to do on earth,” Piefer stated, “However I are inclined to see the best way ahead and low cost the difficulties. It’s important to, I feel, to be an entrepreneur, otherwise you simply wouldn’t do it. “

The Chancellor’s Entrepreneurial Achievement Awards proceed to highlight UW–Madison alumni whose work embodies innovation for the general public good — in communities all through Wisconsin and nations around the globe.

A crowd gathers on the Grainger Corridor Plenary Room to honor the winners of the 2025 Chancellor’s Entrepreneurial Achievement Awards.