2024 Chancellor’s Awards — Honoree Biographies

• Founder and Managing Partner, HealthX Ventures

Serial entrepreneur Mark Bakken has seen the highs and lows of founding and building new ventures. Known as a Wisconsin information technology leader, Bakken has scaled his startups from zero dollars to more than $254 million in revenue under his leadership. He has personally invested in 11 different venture funds and more than 80 individual startups. Collectively, his portfolio companies have raised more than $1.1 billion in venture capital, and he’s successfully bought and/or sold nine companies.

Bakken leads Madison-based HealthX Ventures, a digital healthcare-focused venture capital firm. Since 2015, HealthX has raised $137 million, invested in 34 companies — 17 of which started in Wisconsin — and was named a Founder-Friendly Investor by Inc. Magazine.

Among Bakken’s previous companies is Nordic, an industry leader in healthcare consulting. As CEO, Bakken led Nordic to achieve a #1 Best in KLAS ranking, where it has remained since 2012. Founded in 2010 to focus on companies using Epic Systems electronic health records software, Nordic now employs more than 2,000 globally and remains headquartered in Madison. Bakken also worked with Eric Schmidt on Novell’s Partner Advisory Group and was tapped by Bill Gates to serve on Microsoft’s first Partner Advisory Council from 2001 to 2007.

A UW–Madison computer sciences graduate, Bakken rowed for crew as a student and worked for the Division of Information Technology before founding his first startup, Goliath Networks, which he grew to #97 on the Inc. 500 fastest-growing companies list and sold in 2002.

Currently, Bakken serves on the boards of the Wisconsin Technology Council and the Greater Madison Chamber of Commerce and as a mentor for Creative Destruction Lab-Wisconsin.

• Professor Emeritus of Biomolecular Chemistry, University of Wisconsin–Madison
• Co-Founder, Third Wave Technologies and Cambridge BioTech Corp.

Throughout his remarkable career, James Dahlberg fused academic excellence with an entrepreneurial mindset, translating basic research into powerful technologies for leading startups. He played a key role in merging UW innovation with entrepreneurship, impacting the campus and beyond.

Dahlberg joined UW–Madison’s School of Medicine and Public Health in 1969. His research on DNA and RNA led to multiple patents through the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation (WARF). He recognized that the 1980s biotech boom required university researchers to think like entrepreneurs. In 1981, he co-founded Cambridge BioTech Corp. and in 1993, he and UW chemistry professor Lloyd Smith co-founded Third Wave Technologies. WARF licensed Dahlberg’s technology, which was used for detecting genetic markers of diseases, back to Third Wave, taking an equity investment as a licensing fee. This was the first time that WARF made such an arrangement, marking a sea change in its approach to UW faculty inventions and spinouts.

Third Wave went public in 2001 and was sold in 2008 for $580 million. Its intellectual property was later licensed by Exact Sciences, now a multibillion-dollar cancer screening and diagnostics company. Third Wave opened the door for a new type of successful interaction between WARF and inventors. Dahlberg’s discoveries not only benefit countless patients but also contribute to Madison’s standing as a national center for biohealth innovation.

An inventor on 37 U.S. and international patents, Dahlberg is a trustee and was interim director of the Morgridge Institute for Research, and he served as science adviser to Wisconsin Governor Jim Doyle. His many honors include membership in the National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the European Molecular Biology Organization.

• President and CEO, YMCA of Metropolitan Chicago

A Wisconsin School of Business graduate, Dorri McWhorter is renowned for her social enterprise business leadership. Crain’s Chicago Business lauded McWhorter as a “nonprofit disrupter” who turned around a major agency “by leading as if it’s a startup.” McWhorter is a 2019 inductee into the Chicago Innovation Hall of Fame, and her work to create a new paradigm for the social impact sector is featured in the documentary Uncharitable.

In 2021, McWhorter became president and CEO of the YMCA of Metropolitan Chicago. Under her leadership, the YMCA modernized membership offerings, created partnerships with Nike and Peloton, and is developing a downtown Community Hub within a mixed-income, net-zero carbon emissions apartment complex as well as a west side Sankofa Wellness Village with healthcare, grocery store, and business incubator.

Previously, McWhorter served as CEO of the YWCA Metropolitan Chicago, transforming it from a traditional social service organization to a “21^st century social enterprise.” She added 10 service locations, grew the operating budget by 300 percent, and established a retirement plan with options for childcare providers and small business owners. McWhorter led the effort to develop an exchange-traded fund (ETF) for women’s empowerment (NYSE: WOMN) in partnership with Impact Shares.

McWhorter was a partner at accounting firm Crowe LLP and held senior positions with Snap-on Incorporated and Booz Allen Hamilton. Her civic and philanthropic leadership include board service for Common Impact, 1871 (Technology Business Accelerator), and the Wisconsin School of Business External Advisory Board. She received a 2023 Badger of the Year Award from the Wisconsin Alumni Association.