Richard Leinenkugel, a 1980 graduate of Marquette University, was recently appointed commerce secretary of Wisconsin by Gov. Jim Doyle.
Before taking on the position in September, the secretary served as vice president of sales and marketing at the Chippewa-Falls based Jacob Leinenkugel Brewing Company, which has been in his family for five generations. Already, Leinenkugel has translated the skills and language of this experience into governmental administration.
“Selling and marketing beer is first and foremost a people business. You develop a mindset of being customer-focused. State government needs, first and foremost, to have a customer-service perspective,” said Leinenkugel. “Part of my job is selling the state of Wisconsin.”
Leinenkugel said this mindset was especially important in Department of Commerce’s recruitment capacity, which attracts businesses and investments into Wisconsin. Customers also include the developers and architects raising buildings, which Commerce regulates, licenses, and investigates for safety, and low-to-moderate income citizens benefiting from community block-grant developments which provide affordable housing.
Commerce is also the primary agency which works with the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) to help people in times of crisis, most recently after the summer’s severe floods.
Commerce employs specialists in fields as diverse as housing and community and development, agri-business, importing-exporting, geology and engineering. Geologists are employed to inspect all in-ground and above-ground petroleum tanks in the state to inspect leakage and safety. Leinenkugel said the department recruits from the engineering schools at Marquette and the University of Milwaukee-Wisconsin.
When asked what advice he had for students graduating in economically uncertain times, Leinenkugel drew analogy to the crisis at the time of his own 1980 graduation, when mortgage interest and inflation rates were in double digits and gas prices had doubled since over the last decade. Still, Leinenkugel said “There are still many, many opportunities for college students.”
“It’s not all doom-and-gloom,” he said, and advised students looking into careers in business to seek internships and student organizations that would expose them to contacts in their chosen fields.
Leinenkugel said the economic downturn is “directly” affecting the size of the $3 billion state spending deficit projected for the 2009-10 two-year budget. This year, income tax revenues are down four percent, and those from sales tax were down 10 percent.
Though Wisconsin has strong manufacturing companies tied to automotive, home building and office building-construction, Leinenkugel said these “big-ticket item” industries could face hard times.
Leinenkugel said Wisconsin’s leading paper industry had faced several mill closings, but that the business is “highly cyclical.” He also said agri-business was “strong,” especially in the areas of dairy products and bull’s genetic material for insemination, which Wisconsin is “one of the biggest exporters of.”
Investments in technologies are also concerns for Commerce, including biotech and renewable fuels. Commerce is currently examining research on the conversion of wood products into biofuels, said Leinenkugel.
In 1980, Leinenkugel graduated from Marquette, where he had been a Naval ROTC scholarship winner. He continued his military career for three years, in which he toured the West Pacific twice in six-month increments, stationing out of Hawaii. Deployment let Leinenkugel “see the world,” working in such diverse locales as Australia, Hong Kong, Malaysia, and Oman.
After the military, Leinenkugel began work in sports marketing for Kempner Sports Management, a Chicago-based firm which organizes golf tournaments. For three months out of the year, Leinenkugel worked on site in either Maui or Kauai as tournament director for the LPGA Women’s Kemper Open Tournament.
Around the same time the Leinenkugel Brewing Company was purchased by Miller Brewing, Leinenkugel began work at the family business, where he would achieve the title of vice president of marketing and sales.
When asked whether he observed in his 21 years selling beer if consumers drink more or less during a poor economy, Leinenkugel said, “There are different schools of thought. One is that beer is a relatively affordable luxury. Even [Leinenkugel brand] is maybe a dollar more per six-pack. It’s one of life’s simple pleasures people still want to enjoy with friends and family, and cheaper than a $20 or $30 bottle of wine.”
“I would think people still want to be social; I wouldn’t look to beer to suffer in hard times,” said Leinenkugel.
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