A Real Goal-Getter Alice Ferris has taken a winding career path centered on helping others succeed BY SIRI PAIRIN | PHOTO BY NARAYAN MAHON
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lot of Alice Ferris’ (B.A. ’91, MBA ’94) life happens by accident. Or, at least, there’s a pattern of unintentional happenings that she credits with getting her from point A to point B on the broader timeline of her career. Born in Beaver Dam, Wisconsin, to parents who emigrated from Taipei, Taiwan, Ferris was the first Chinese baby born at Beaver Dam Lutheran Hospital. She grew up in Wisconsin and loved it so much she thought she would never leave. “I liked growing up there,” Ferris says. “I just figured I was going to live and die in Wisconsin.” As it turns out, Ferris’ career eventually took her out of Wisconsin, but not before first receiving two degrees from the University of Wisconsin–Madison. Ferris pursued her undergraduate degree with the intention of majoring only in radio, TV, and film. But after taking enough economics classes on the side for fun, she realized she could declare a double
major. This, she says, was the first of many “accidents” that have landed her where she is today. The same kind of unpredictable fate befell her graduate degree. Originally on track to get her MBA in general management from the Wisconsin School of Business, Ferris quickly realized that all the accounting classes she was taking out of sheer interest would allow her to once again double major. It might be difficult to imagine all the possible career trajectories for someone with such a range of skills and knowledge, but the eventual focus of Ferris’ career can perhaps once again be credited to a happy accident. Ferris started volunteering for Wisconsin Public Television (WPT) when she was 15 years old and attending West High School in Madison. From a young age, she knew she wanted to study media and got a job on the production crew at WPT her freshman year of college. But she also— unintentionally—landed a job in the
18 | UW–Madison Wisconsin School of Business
membership department there. It became clear that Ferris had an aptitude for fundraising, and she saw great opportunity to expand not only her skill set but also her career. “I wasn’t so sure about always having a job, going into television production,” Ferris says. “That’s kind of why I switched to the revenue generation side of things and why the Wisconsin MBA made sense to me.” After completing her MBA, Ferris began searching for experience outside of WPT, where she was then working in fundraising full time. Her next chapter presented itself in the form of a job as director of development at Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, Arizona. The job, Ferris says, had fateful UW–Madison connections. “I’m pretty sure there are two reasons why my résumé ended up on the top,” she says. “One was that the director at the time was a UW alumnus. The second was that I was the only person among