WUWM has been serving the community for over 60 years. To celebrate the work that we do, we're talking with the people who do it. Jill Schanon Macek is WUWM's gift officer. She's the voice answering audience questions, manages donor relationships, and lends a helping hand when it comes to special events
For this segment of Get to Know WUWM, we sat down with Jill to learn more about her, her work, and what she loves about Milwaukee.
This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
Do you have any guiding philosophies or mentality that you have while approaching your job to get the best results for everyone involved?
I think it starts with listening to people. I mean, people share some pretty amazing stories with me and why they're feeling, you know. Why they support the station and sometimes, you know, through those conversations you might identify — that something is going to be happening at the station and you might think, oh, that person might be interested in getting involved in this project. So, I think that listening to people understanding what their priorities are, why they're giving. It's so important to match those people with what's happening and helping them feel a connection to WUWM.
How would you say WUWM represents not only the city that we are serving and reporting in, but also how do we reflect the culture? What makes WUWM unique against other news outlets here?
Well, it's hard for me to compare to other news outlets because I'm really not tuning in ... but I really love working here because when I do tell people where I work, you know, just neighbors, friends, and new people I meet, if they don't know us, then I tell them about us. But if they've been longtime listeners, they say that they think we're getting stronger as a station.
Share a fun fact about yourself.
It’s so funny because I used to keep bees for 15 years, and that would always be my go-to thing. But now I just grow a bunch of native plants. My backyard looks like a jungle, and I try to attract all the native bees. Honeybees, for me, were more of an interest because of the science of honeybees. They’re very interesting creatures, and socially they’re a neat insect. I loved the honey they produced, and it became a hobby where I was going all over keeping bees, running 20-some hives, doing all that work.
Then, as honeybee numbers were declining, I thought, that’s our native bees, too. Honeybees aren’t even native. I mean, yeah, we need them for agriculture, but I want to help our local insects, not just our honeybees, but our fireflies and every kind of beetle. So I went bananas. Twenty years ago, I had some level of native plants, but now it’s blown up.
It’s probably not a fun fact, but just a matter of fact: I tend to wear high-vis clothes when I’m out in the backyard weeding because my family loses track of me.
