Far Biotech: What We Invent Here, and What We Build Here: Maggie Brickerman on Wisconsin’s Next Chapter

Wisconsin’s innovation economy is entering a consequential moment. The state already has deep strengths in research, biotechnology, manufacturing, higher education, and entrepreneurship. At the same time, emerging fields such as quantum, fusion, biomanufacturing, and autonomy are posing new questions about where Wisconsin can lead and what it will take to turn scientific and technical strength into companies, jobs, and enduring economic growth.

Few people sit closer to those questions than Maggie Brickerman. As president of the Wisconsin Technology Council, Brickerman leads an organization that serves as a statewide connector among entrepreneurs, investors, researchers, corporations, and policymakers – with a mission centered on growing and retaining science- and technology-based businesses in Wisconsin. Before taking the role, she spent more than a decade at gener8tor, where she helped to grow the organization from a small startup into a national platform supporting thousands of companies. Earlier in her career, she worked in Wisconsin politics—experience that still informs how she thinks about coalition-building, policy, and getting ambitious ideas across the finish line.

That combination gives Brickerman a particularly wide-angle lens of what makes innovation ecosystems work.

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