Lake Effect Spotlight

In February of 1975, four women in Milwaukee found themselves at the height of their careers as business executives. However, they were just a handful of leaders and there was a glaring need for more women to be elevated and advocated for in the workplace. To help change the narrative and landscape for women, they formed the group known today as TEMPO. 

The founding members’ hope was to create a society where women hold an equal place in leadership, policy, and decision making. TEMPO has grown over the past 50 years to provide programming, professional development opportunities and mentorship for over 800 members.  

To learn more about the organization and the work they’re continuing to do, Lake Effect's Audrey Nowakowski is joined by TEMPO president and CEO Jen Dirks. She begins by explaining that while the landscape for women leaders has changed since the 70s, TEMPO’s key goals have not.  

This Sunday is International Women’s Day. And to celebrate, we passed the mic to two organizers from Milwaukee’s International Women’s Day Coalition.  

For this month’s group chat, Kayla Patterson and KJ Johnson talk about what womanhood means to them and why the fight for reproductive justice continues. They also highlight the events the coalition has planned for this International Women’s Day weekend. 

2024 was a big year in politics in Wisconsin and across the country. Donald Trump was running for a second term against former President Joe Biden...who ended up dropping out of the race.  

In the summer of 2024 the Republican National Convention was held in Milwaukee, which brought Trump and other Republican leaders to the state. Just ahead of that, we got a group of conservative-leaning voters together. At the time, all of voter roundtable participants planned to vote for Donald Trump.  

Now that Trump has been in office for a little over a year, we’re checking back in with some of them to see how they ended up voting, and what they think of Trump’s second term so far. We’ll start with Gissell Vera, an education advocate in Milwaukee. Here she is catching up with WUWM’s Maayan Silver. 

Starting this weekend the Milwaukee County Transit System will shorten some routes at the edges of its ridership area. Riders will also need to wait longer for their buses at some stops. 

That’s because the Milwaukee County Transit System reduced service to some routes to help deal with a 14 million dollar budget deficit. You may remember that bus fares went up by 75 cents at the beginning of this year. To learn more about these most recent changes, WUWM education reporter Katherine Kokal is joined by Jesus Ochoa, the system’s Director of Service Development.  

Several Wisconsin companies are suing the Trump administration to get back some of the money they lost due to tariffs. Companies began filing lawsuits back in December in the U.S Court of International Trade.  

That was before the U.S. Supreme Court overturned many of Trump’s tariffs last month. Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reporter Ricardo Torres has been following this story. He spoke with WUWM’s Eric Von Fellow Maria Peralta-Arellano.   

The cold has returned to Milwaukee and the water is slowly icing over once again. But if you stare out at Lake Michigan, you’ll see flowing water in the not-so-distant horizon. And there’s a good reason for that, as artist and educator Geo Rutherford can tell you.  

Rutherford is an educator and content creator based here in Wisconsin, whose work focuses on bodies of water. Her TikTok, geodesaurus, shares videos filled with facts about our waterways, including Lake Michigan. She joins Lake Effect’s Joy Powers to explain what makes Lake Michigan so unique. 

March is around the corner — which means it’s almost nesting season for Barred Owls! 

For the second year, the Schlitz Audubon Nature Center will give people a look into the lives of Barred Owls with a nest box camera. Lindsay Focht is the raptor program director at Schlitz Audubon. She says the live stream is part of the nature center’s Barred Owl Monitoring Project.  

Focht joins Lake Effect’s Xcaret Nuñez to share how people can watch online as owlets hatch this spring. 

More and more people of all ages are using AI for companionship.  

Some states are trying to require periodic reminders to users that the chatbots are not real people. In New York, those reminders would appear in the conversation every three hours. But some researchers say those reminders could harm users’ mental health. 

UW-Milwaukee associate professor Linnea Laestadius took that position in a recent piece she coauthored. Laestadius joins WUWM education reporter Katherine Kokal to talk about why her research backs up that concern.  

A warning to our listeners that this conversation includes mention of suicide.  

What’s your go-to cocktail order? Well, if you’re in Milwaukee or somewhere in Wisconsin, there’s a good chance it’s a brandy old-fashioned. But even where the old fashioned reigns, Milwaukee has a strong cocktail bar scene where you can get endless combinations of cocktails.  

For cocktail writer and author Robert Simonson, Wisconsin has always held its own in the cocktail world – even when he moved away from home to be a writer in New York City for decades to cover cocktails.  

Simonson recently returned home to Milwaukee where he will continue to write about food, drink, history and regional culture. To share more about his experience and how the Midwest compares to the East Coast in its cocktail culture, Simonson joins Lake Effect's Audrey Nowakowski.

During February we’ve been exploring how winters are changing in Wisconsin in our Thin Ice series. We’ve looked at the impact on ice fishing and storm water management. 

Today, WUWM environmental reporter Susan Bence looks at new data from Climate Central on just how much winter temperatures and even the length of the winter season is changing.