UW Major: Civil and Environmental Engineering
Cofounder, Deerpath Capital Management
Philanthropist
Gary Wendt grew up in Rio, Wisconsin, a farm town 30 miles north of Madison. In the 1950s, the local high school was so small that Wendt was asked to play on every sports team, take up the trombone, and sing in the chorus, just to help flesh out the rosters. “Because of that, I got the impression I could do anything,” he says. “I learned in later life that there were other people who were better at various things, but at least I had the confidence and willingness to try a lot of different things.”
One of those things was engineering, which Wendt pursued at the UW in large part to honor his father, who built a limestone-grinding business and became one of the first highway road-blasters in the state — despite having only a fourth-grade education. “There was never any question I was going to go to college, which looking back is a little amazing. But my father was an amazing guy,” Wendt says.
At the UW, an adviser suggested that Wendt enroll in an MBA program after finishing his engineering degree. “[The adviser] said maybe you should go out of state because your whole life has been in this 30-mile radius,” he says. At first, Wendt was unconvinced, but he agreed to fill out some applications.
Those applications yielded several acceptances to prestigious schools on both coasts, including Harvard, which Wendt ultimately chose. “It was overwhelming,” he says. “I was absolutely terrified by the whole thing. But I made it.”
He then embarked on a career in financial management, starting as a senior executive at GE Capital Corporation (CECC) and becoming chairman and CEO from 1989 to 1998. During his tenure, earnings grew from 6 percent to 46 percent of GE’s total earnings, and GECC became one of the three largest financial services providers in the world.
After that, Wendt led the restructuring of financial services company Conseco, now CNO Financial Group, and in 2007, he cofounded Deerpath Capital Management, which provided financing to defense, health care, software, and automotive companies. The firm grew to manage $5 billion in assets and deployed more than $10 billion in investments before its sale in 2023.
Wendt now has more time for philanthropy work, and he’s especially focused on providing educational opportunities to young people from disadvantaged backgrounds. He has sponsored several scholarships and programs at the UW, including the formation of the innovative Business for Non-Majors course and an international leadership seminar for undergraduate engineering students, hosted in South Africa.
In recent years, Wendt has split his time between Florida and Wisconsin. He was invited to become a founding trustee of Florida Polytechnic University, the state’s first STEM-dedicated public university, and he’s on the board of The Everglades Foundation. Wendt has served on the national board of the Boys and Girls Club for more than 30 years. Among many other initiatives, he provided the initial funds to launch and maintain a chapter in Hayward, Wisconsin, that serves children who live on the reservation that is home to the Lac Courte Oreilles Band of Lake Superior Ojibwe.
The project in Hayward opened Wendt’s eyes to some of the unique challenges faced by Native youth across the country, and he recently committed $10 million to launch a nationwide program to provide higher-education support to tribes. “I was blessed to have parents who were able to send me to college, and I think everybody ought to have that chance,” he says. “My efforts are a raindrop in a hurricane, but if I can touch a few kids’ lives and help them to make some progress, that’s good.”