Wisconsin Department of Workforce Development

TOMMY G. THOMPSON Governor State of Wisconsin

For Immediate Release - November 10, 1998
Contact: David Blaska (608) 266-6925

GOVERNOR NAMES PETER FOX TO HEAD WORKFORCE INITIATIVE

MADISON -- Gov. Tommy Thompson today named a special assistant to lead his Initiative on Building Tomorrow’s Workforce.

The governor asked University of Wisconsin official Peter D. Fox to head up the effort to keep employers and high-skill jobs growing in Wisconsin. Fox will have cabinet rank.

"Peter Fox will have broad powers to assure that all state agencies are working cooperatively with business, labor and educators to build tomorrow’s workforce," Gov. Thompson said. "We need to train more workers to satisfy the growing demand for high-skilled jobs in Wisconsin industry."

The special assistant will use the existing Council on Workforce Excellence, made up of business, labor, education, and government, as his sounding board.

The Governor’s initiative on Building Tomorrow’s Workforce emphasizes training, education, recruitment, and supportive services, such as transportation and childcare. It responds to five workforce forums held this summer throughout the state involving 435 businesses in which, overwhelmingly, employers said they needed more and better-trained workers, especially in the industrial and technical trades.

Since 1994, Fox has been director of public information for the University of Wisconsin System. From 1972 to 1994, Fox was a newspaper journalist with the (Madison) Wisconsin State Journal, the Billings (Montana) Gazette, and most recently, the Racine Journal Times, of which he was editor in chief. He also served as vice president and president of the Wisconsin Associated Press Association.

Fox is a lieutenant colonel in the Wisconsin Army National Guard.

He was brought up in Wisconsin Dells, earned a bachelor’s and masters of arts degrees in journalism at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and is conversant in Japanese, Russian, and Spanish. He has two daughters and lives in Madison.

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