Introducing the DCAA Board of Directors
The Board of Directors of the Daily Cardinal Alumni Association believes it is important for the alumni and other interested individuals to know who is guiding the efforts to assist the Cardinal. These alumni were selected by the president of the association for their prior express interest in and dedication to helping the Cardinal. The board has a full membership of 11 and future members are selected by a five-member nominating committee.
Anthony T. Sansone, President
Anthony T. (Tony) Sansone served on The Daily Cardinal as the production manager from 1990 to 1991. He later returned to the Cardinal in 1995 to assist the financial recovery of the newspaper, as well as starting the newspaper's web site: The Digital Cardinal. In 1996, he was named vice president of the board of directors and chair of the personnel committee, positions he held until Sept. 1997.
He graduated from the UW-Madison in 1994 with a bachelor's degree in political science and went to work as a web developer for WISC-TV, the CBS affiliate in Madison in 1995. In 1997, he became the lead web developer for ACNielsen, a leading market research firm, located in Schaumburg, Ill.
After leaving the Cardinal and settling into working life, Sansone founded the Daily Cardinal Alumni Association. He currently serves as its president while also serving as a director of the Wisconsin Alumni Association.
He married Allison Hantschel, a former Cardinal editor in chief, in 1998. They live in the northwest Chicago suburb of Schaumburg.
Richard H. Leonard, Vice President
Richard H. (Dick) Leonard graduated from UW and The Daily Cardinal in May, 1947, after four years in the army in World War II, and became a reporter at The Milwaukee Journal. In 1967, he became editor of the Journal and held that position until 1985.
This was an exciting time to be an editor. Watergate, the race riots, the Vietnam War, the struggle for civil rights and equality for women and the yuppies, hippies and baby boomers created continuing challenges in making news and editorial judgments.
Outside the office, Leonard was elected national president of the Society of Professional Journalists, chairman of the International Press Institute, an organization of news executives in more than 100 nations and president of the Milwaukee Press Club. He served on the Pulitzer Prize Board for 10 years.
Recognition includes the UW Chancellor's Award, Carr Van Anda Award of Ohio University, Society of Professional Journalists Significant Achievement Award, Who's Who Award, East-West Center Distinguished Service Award, election to Phi Kappa Phi Honor Society and Milwaukee Press Club Hall of Fame and the Marquette University Outstanding Faculty Adviser Award.
In 1986 he became editor-in-residence at the East-West Center in Honolulu, leaving in 1989 to become a faculty member at Marquette, where he is now professor emeritus.
He married Barbara Klausner, a Cardinal staffer, who is now a desktop publisher. Daughter Laurie and husband are actors in New York. Daughter Lisa and husband operate the family horse farm in Muskego.
Jean Sue Johnson Libkind, Secretary
Jean Sue Johnson Libkind currently serves as the director of Worldwide Books in Ithaca and the owner of The Bookschlepper's Subsidiary Rights Agency.
Her previous work experience includes acting as the Director of Publishing Operations for the Jewish Publication Society. She also has worked on the staffs at the university presses of Pennsylvania, Georgia and Wisconsin.
Her time at the Cardinal brings back several fond memories. She worked as the managing editor from 1965-66 and the Monday night editor from 1964-65. She was also previously married to a Cardinal alumnus, David Spradling, photo editor from 1965-66.
"Going back over a bound volume, I can smell the ink and hear the flatbed press roar," Johnson recalled. "I remember the courage of a handful of people who kept the paper coming out when we were threatened with an investigation by the state legislature for Communist leanings. Years later, I asked a friend from the Cardinal if we had risked the consequences of a HUAC investigation because we were idealistic or naive. 'I would like to think,' he said, 'that we were idealistic but I suspect we were naive.' Maybe. But once you've stood up to that challenge, you can handle almost anything in life."
Greg Graze
Greg Graze is president of Graze Public Relations, a Dallas-based public relations firm specializing in medical and health care.
Before establishing his own firm in October 1990, Graze was a senior vice president for several years in the Dallas office of an international public relations firm. From 1980-87, he was head of public relations for Parkland Memorial Hospital in Dallas, a large public teaching hospital.
Before going into public relations, Greg spent 10 years in journalism, working as a reporter for the Press-Enterprise in Riverside, CA, and later at the Dallas Times Herald. In 1978-79 he was a Professional Journalism Fellow at Stanford University.
As an undergrad in Madison in the late 1960s, Graze spent most of his free time at The Daily Cardinal. He started working there during the first weeks of his freshman year as a staff writer and continued to work his way up the masthead to night editor, news editor, and finally editor in chief in 1968-69.
He also managed to work as a campus stringer for The Washington Post and Newsweek and was a copy editor intern at The Post in the summer of 1968.
After college, Greg married Sue Spevack, '70, who also at one time worked on the Cardinal staff. They had been introduced by Cardinal editor Rena Steinzor. Greg and Sue now have two teenage children and have lived in Dallas since August 1975.
Tom Griffin
Though Tom Griffin has two degrees from the University of Wisconsin ('73, '77), he is the alumni magazine editor at the University of Washington in Seattle. He cleverly disguises his true academic heritage by telling everyone he is a "UW" grad. During his nine years as editor, the magazine has won 85 awards from organizations such as the Society of Professional Journalists, the Washington Press Association, PRINT Magazine and the Council for Advancement and Support of Education. Griffin has lived in Seattle for 18 years and was previously the editor of the University of Washington's faculty/staff newspaper and PR director for its performing arts center. Before moving to the "Left Coast," he was a reporter on the ill-fated Madison Press Connection, where he rubbed shoulders with many Cardinal alumni. On the Cardinal staff from 1975-77, he has fond memories of covering the Dane County Board, writing the "Screen Gems" column about films on campus, and reviewing the first Star Wars movie. His career has also included stints as a Berlitz teacher in London and Germany and as an English conversation coach at an all-boys high school in Paris. While living in Paris, his wife (Julie Burmeister, '73) studied at the Cordon Bleu cooking school. She currently is a pastry chef in Seattle. They have two children.
John Keefe
John Keefe is president of North Woods Productions, a Brooklyn-based company specializing in web production, particularly community-building projects and live events, as well as audio and video production.
Keefe's most recent projects include developing and maintaining the "Living with Suicide" website, created in conjunction with Web Lab and PBS Online as a site for people to share stories about how they have coped with a loved-one's suicide. <http://www.pbs.org/ weblab/living/>
Other clients include ABC News Productions (for video and audio field work appearing on the History Channel's "As It Happened," A&E's "Biography," and the Discovery Channel's "Discovery News"); the A&E Television Network; and National Public Radio among others.
Before founding North Woods Productions, Keefe was science editor at Discovery Channel Online, where he also served as executive producer for DCOL's live internet broadcasts and helped shape the site's community and discussion software systems.
In 1996, Keefe received a George Foster Peabody award as co-creator and senior producer of "Kinetic City Super Crew," a weekly, science radio show for children.
A journalist by training, Keefe spent several years as a feature writer, general assignment report and police-beat reporter for two of Wisconsin's daily newspapers: the Wisconsin State Journal, of Madison, and the Racine Journal Times in Racine.
At the Cardinal, Keefe served as reporter, photographer, night editor, page two editor, production manager and editor in chief. Keefe was at the center of two major events in Cardinal history: He installed and maintained the first networked computer system for writing, editing and typesetting copy, and, while editor, he helped thwart a serious hostile takeover by The Badger Herald.
Keefe and his wife live in Brooklyn.
Allison M. Sansone
Allison Marie Sansone graduated from the UW in 1996 with a bachelor's degree and a major in journalism. She spent four years at The Daily Cardinal in the various positions of arts editor, accounts manager, editor in chief and archivist.
She founded The Daily Cardinal Archive Project, an ongoing effort to preserve and protect the Cardinal's history, in 1997. She also had the privilege of working on a small team of staff members to restore the Cardinal to daily publication after its brief shutdown.
It was a very frightening and yet immensely rewarding time to work at the paper, as it reinvented itself and shook off old pretenses, as staffers learned to face the fact that status quo would no longer do, as a bunch of kids from nowhere learned what they were capable of as people. Much as they do every day at the Cardinal now.
She held internships at The Madison Times, On Wisconsin magazine and The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.
After graduation, she worked as a freelance writer, contributing to Isthmus, Madison Magazine, Wisconsin Trails magazine and On Wisconsin.
In March 1998, she became a reporter at The Courier News, a 126-year-old local daily, covering the northwest suburbs of Chicago.
In August 1998, she married Anthony T. Sansone. They live in the Chicago area.
Mark A. Wegner
Mark Wegner works as a reporter and researcher for National Journal's CongressDaily, a twice-daily Capitol Hill newsletter, writing about congressional elections and the 2000 census.
Wegner came to Washington in August of 1997 to begin an internship program with the Washington Center for Politics and Journalism, working at CongressDaily, a job that became permanent in January 1998.
During his tenure in Washington, Wegner has reported on trade and immigration legislation, as well as the House impeachment and Senate trial of President Clinton.
A Wisconsin native, Wegner graduated Winneconne High School in 1993. He entered the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where he took courses in journalism and history, completing both majors and graduating with a bachelor of arts degree in May 1997.
Wegner began writing regularly for The Daily Cardinal in 1995, and became a reporter and campus editor that fall. Wegner served as editor in chief during the 1996-97 academic year, helping to rebuild the Cardinal's editorial staff and operations.
After graduation, Wegner remained in touch with Cardinal staff and board members. In 1998, Wegner joined in to help found the Daily Cardinal Alumni Association. He resides in Washington D.C. and serves on the DCAA board.