Wendy Warren Grapentine

Wendy Warren Grapentine is former Director of the Wisconsin Public Utility Institute and a Faculty Associate at the University of Wisconsin School of Business.  She received her B.S. in journalism from the University of Colorado, Boulder with an emphasis in political science.

Ms. Grapentine spent 12 years in the journalism field, beginning her career at KAAL-TV, the ABC affiliate in Austin, Minnesota.  She worked as the environmental reporter, weekend news anchor and producer as well as weekend weather anchor.  In 1991 she moved to WKOW-TV, the ABC affiliate in Madison, Wisconsin where she produced the 10pm news and subsequently was named co-anchor of the program in June of 1992.

Over the course of the next ten years, Ms. Grapentine added co-anchoring of the 5pm news to her responsibilities and developed the “Medical Minute”, a daily report on developments in the field of health and medicine.  She also led the newsroom in daily decisions regarding news content and coverage.  During her tenure at WKOW, Ms. Grapentine became closely tied to many charitable organizations within the community, serving on boards and chairing major fundraising events.

In 2002, Ms. Grapentine chose to transfer her facilitation, educational and networking skills to a new arena: public utilities.  Her position as Director of the Wisconsin Public Utility Institute involved facilitating executive education courses and roundtable discussions that aid in the examination and development of public policies for the electricity, natural gas and telecommunications industries. In the fall of 2006, Ms. Grapentine departed as full time director of the Wisconsin Public Utility Institute, and now consults on specific Institute programs on a part-time basis.