UW-Madison’s Kimberly Santiago: An Internationalist at Heart
Kimberly Santiago is the communications and advancement manager for UW-Madison’s College of Agriculture and Life Sciences
Part 2 of 2
By Jonathan Gramling
In some ways, Kimberly “Kim” Santiago was born an internationalist. Her Filipino father was a doctor who came to Chicago where he met and married Santiago’s mother. When Santiago was five, her father was recruited to be a doctor in Monroe Wisconsin.
Santiago dreamed of entering the diplomatic corps and studied international relations. But a sexist advisor discouraged her from picking up that career and so she turned to rowing, which eventually allowed her to compete in the 1988 Olympics in Seoul and 1992 in Barcelona.
In 1988, while her father got his expenses paid to attend the Seoul Olympics through Seagram’s, Santiago still had to pay part of her way. There were other things that held the 1988 rowing team back.
“In 1988, we raced in a regatta in Switzerland called the Lucerne Regatta,” Santiago said. “It’s the premier regatta. At that time, how teams stacked up at the Lucerne Regatta was sort of an indication of how you were going to stack out at the Olympics or the World Championships. That was the closest that we had ever come to the East Germans because there was still an East Germany back then. We had an amazing race. We had an amazing team. But after that regatta, we went back to train in the U.S. whereas all of the other teams stayed in Europe and competed against each other. They kept raising the bat, but we over here were not in that competition. We trained in a vacuum. And so when we got to Seoul, the race was 2,000 meters, about two miles. And it takes about 7-8 minutes for a four, which was what I was in. There is a method to a race. Off the blocks, you would be at 37 strokes a minute. Then the body of the race would be at 34 strokes per minute and then you get to 39 at the sprint at the end. When we got to Seoul, everyone had taken the stroke rate up 2-3 notches from the dead start. We hadn’t. We didn’t get the memo. We made it to the final. But the final race was disappointing. We were fifth. We made it to the finals, which is an amazing thing because rowing races are done with six boats. If you start with 50, you get down to six. We made it into the final six.”
While Santiago went to the 1992 Olympics, she was not able to compete due to a change in format where her area competition was changed to one without a coxswain. But that didn’t stop her from racking up a mountain of debt as she prepared for the 1992 Games.
“In 1990, women’s rowing hired a former East German coach,” Santiago said. “East Germany disappeared and all of those coaches went on the market. And so, they hired the East German coach. He had a different approach to training and we had practice three times per day, six days per week. And we went two times on Sunday. You really couldn’t have a job at all. I basically subsidized my last year off my credit cards and I had this massive amount of debt. I had my credit card debt and all of my student loans. I went from my senior year trying out for the team. I didn’t think I would make the team. I made the team and then I spent the next four years training. I never had a job, but I still had to pay my student loans every month.”
When Santiago left the Olympics behind, she still had to deal with her debt.
“I came back here and I had three jobs,” Santiago said. “I would get up at 5:30 in the morning and go to Land’s End in Dodgeville and worked in their factory. Then I drove to Madison and took classes at UW-Madison and then I drove out to Cross Plains and worked at Land’s End’s phone center and then worked in their specialty call center. Then I would drive back out to Spring Green. I also worked for a fiberglass manufacturer doing custom car parts. It was like three jobs just trying to pay my bills and survive. One day, I was driving into Madison to go to class and there was this announcement about this job to teach English in Japan. I applied and I went to Japan to get out of debt. And I did. I worked six months and did not spend a penny. I didn’t eat anything and saved all of my money and paid off all of my debt. I decided I would stay in Japan and check it out.”
Santiago stayed in Japan teaching ESL and eventually contacted the Wisconsin Alumni Association to see if there was an alumni chapter in Japan. WAA had a bunch of contact information, but no organization. They would support Santiago with information, but no funding.
“Remember those old computer printouts, the green and white stripes,” Santiago said. “Well they sent me a printout of all of the alumni that they thought were living in Japan. And so I started organizing events. This was before the Internet. It was faxes and phone calls and mailings. And every month, I would organize an event. I would send a fax out to all of these people. ‘We’re going to meet here at this time.’ There were no cell phones. And people would show up at that place at that time. I did that for a couple of years. And then one summer, I was back visiting and I stopped in at the WAA. They said, ‘We’re creating this new position for international alumni relations. If you are interested, apply.’ And so I applied and got the job. And so I moved back to Madison.’
Santiago began working in the international alumni relations at a special time at UW-Madison that began to pay more attention to Asia and its alumni who live there.
“The whole reason for that position was because UW was celebrating its sesquicentennial, its 150th anniversary,” Santiago said. “Donna Shalala was no longer chancellor, but when she had been chancellor, she had travelled to Thailand and Taiwan with the director of the WAA and I believe the president of the UW Foundation. And they were so well received when they were there, she really wanted to see this international engagement with the alumni. I think they were blown away by the reception they received. I started my position after that. But I think that is what really fueled the creation of the position along with the sesquicentennial. I spent time trying to get people to mail back post cards that would give us their address. It was more building up contacts and trying to build up a network. I didn’t get to travel the world, but a lot of the alumni were in Asia. That’s where my work was focused.”
One of the projects that Santiago was able to work on was the Thai Pavilion.
“Thailand had a long history of engagement with the University and they had a very strong alumni chapter,” Santiago said. “They called themselves ‘The Thai Mafia.’ You can see the relationship with Thailand in the Thai Pavilion, which is a project that I was a part of amongst many players at the University. That project is what sent me back to Asia. Anything that could go wrong did go wrong with the pavilion. But it was done in a very Thai way. I learned this at Asia 2000. You think the train has gone off the rails and the Thais will tell you, ‘Everything is fine.’ And everything is fine. The Thai Pavilion is now 21 years old. Last year was the 20th year. That has a whole story and history. Now they are in the process of renovating it. I’m helping Olbrich and UW-Madison with that.”
And Santiago was able to form a lot of long-lasting relationships as she met alumni from around the world.
“We had the sesquicentennial through which they had the International Convocation, the final event,” Santiago said. “They decided that they would honor eight distinguished international alumni. Every year, you have distinguished alumni who are recognized. But that particular year, they were focusing on international alumni. There were alumni nominated mostly from Asia, but also Europe as well. There were a lot of players involved with that. And then after the sesquicentennial, we had a meeting with our international alumni. And they wanted to see something in Asia. And so the next year, we had the first International Alumni Conference, which was in Bangkok. It was called Asia 2000. It was a big event. We had alumni from all around the world who came. The chancellor went. Deans from the schools and colleges went. There was a lot of participation from campus. We also had something that David Ward had started called the Asian Partnership Initiative. It sat somewhere between the international division and the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences. They have a long history of being engaged internationally. We had one day focused on just the academic relationships and opportunities and then three days of programming that was, at that time, current events that we could collaborate on.”
And the interest in Asia continued with the India Initiative and others.
“It was basically the BRICs: Brazil, Russia, India and China and so we had four initiatives,” Santiago said. “For the Indian Initiative, we were building up both the network in India, mostly focusing on alumni. But we were also building up this opportunity to bring Indian graduate students to UW-Madison to have this research experience and then hopefully build a pipeline of potential Ph.D. students. And it was named after Gobind Khorana who was the first overseas Indian to win the Nobel Peace Prize and was a member of the UW-Madison faculty. He ended up leaving here and going to MIT. Every Indian student knows him. There is a plaque for him on the campus.”
Today, Santiago works for the UW-Madison College of Agriculture and Life Sciences in ag and applied economics, a small, but mighty department, according to Santiago. And while that professor who discouraged her from seeking to enter the U.S. diplomatic corps somewhat had his way, Santiago has pursued her own international relations. She and her husband José J. Madera went to the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing China and recently, they went to an incredible wedding in India that involved movie sets and a lavish décor that lasted for three days. Santiago’s friendships and memories span the globe.
