Madison – The WMC Foundation announced Tuesday that Mauston native Jack Orton has been hired to run the Business World Program that educates high school students about free enterprise and job creation.
“Jack will be a tremendous leader of the WMC Business World Program,” said Kurt R. Bauer, WMC President/CEO. “He’s a Wisconsin native who has impeccable academic credentials and has been a volunteer leader in Mauston and throughout his college career.”
Orton is a graduate of Holy Cross College, Worcester, Mass., and he studied at the University of Oxford, in Oxfordshire, England. Orton founded the Holy Cross debate society and wrote for various campus publications. Orton took college-level courses at Northwestern University, Notre Dame, and other colleges while still in high school in Mauston. He is an accomplished athlete and trumpet player.
“Jack Orton is a role model for our high school students,” Bauer said. “And he will fill them with the passion for free markets that every American student should have, but are often lacking in today’s education curriculum.”
Orton said he looks forward to working to educate Wisconsin’s high schoolers about jobs and the economy.
“This opportunity to direct the Business World program, for me, comes at such a unique and critical moment in our lifetime,” Orton said. “Now, more than ever, students are thrust into college or into the real world with little substantive knowledge of the values of business and free-market enterprise.”
Orton said he is excited to grow Business World into an even stronger program that impacts a larger number of students. Business World traditionally has offered two summer camps on college campuses and other single-day programs around the state.
“The future for Business World is incredibly bright,” Orton said. “The WMC Foundation was founded on the idea of an education program designed with the future business leaders of Wisconsin in mind. At my high school, in order to graduate, a student was required to take a class on personal finance and financial literacy. That’s not the case in all high schools across the state. But, just that small taste of the real world at an early age has made an incredibly positive difference in my own life. That is what drives us considering Business World. We want to send the program into the stratosphere.”
For Further Information Contact:
Kurt R. Bauer, (608) 258-3400
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