It was 1985 when Margaret Carlson received the phone call from the University of Minnesota beckoning her to fill an open fundraising position.
She said she always intended to work at the University, but as it turned out, fundraising would not be her higher calling.
“I saw there was an opening for the head of the Alumni Association, and I said, ‘That’s the job I want to apply for,’ ” Carlson said.
She was named the association’s chief executive
officer, making Carlson the first woman to hold that position at a Big Ten university.
With her retirement looming, the Alumni Association announced Feb. 6 that Phil Esten will replace Carlson when she leaves in March. Esten is currently the associate athletics director at the University and he spearheaded the TCF Bank Stadium project, working with design, construction, operations and management.
The 37-year-old will be the seventh person to head the Alumni Association. He said he looks forward to taking the managerial skills he used in the athletics department and applying them more broadly to the University.
“Margaret Carlson set a high bar,” Bruce Mooty,
co-chair of the search committee, said in a statement, “and Phil is uniquely qualified to carry that leadership forward.”
Carlson, 66, transformed the University of Minnesota Alumni Association into more than programs for pride and spirit.
The 106-year-old association has become one marked by its initiatives to support the University with its money and with its stories. When Carlson took control 25 years ago, she brought with her a vision of a network of members who work together to spur state and private support of the University.
Permanent shareholders
Each of the 402,000 living alumni has a story, Carlson said.
“People tell me their stories,” she said. “I think that’s my job, to help people understand that students come here, the University changes their [lives] and they go on and change the world.”
Carlson said she considers alumni the “permanent shareholders” of the University, which gives them the responsibility to act as ambassadors.
Mary McLeod, chairwoman of the Alumni Association’s Advocacy Committee, said Carlson has guided the association in researching policy issues, establishing a position on those issues and lobbying the state Legislature.
“We have made a difference on many of the key initiatives at the University over the past 25 years, and Margaret’s fingerprints may be found on every one of them,” McLeod said at Carlson’s retirement celebration in January.
Carlson will be remembered for some of the large and far-reaching projects completed under her watch. She helped lead the campaign that established the Regent Candidate Advisory Council, a committee that vets potential regents, giving more
public input to a process that Carlson referred to as “far too political.”
In 2000, the $46-million McNamara Alumni Center opened. Carlson said the association had wanted a building for decades.
Bringing Gophers football back to campus is another boasted accomplishment of the Alumni Association under Carlson. It was resolved in 2003 that the organization would pledge $1 million toward the new stadium. At President Bob Bruininks’ request, they coupled the gift with $500,000 toward scholarships.
It wasn’t until 2006 that the Legislature approved the necessary $138 million to build TCF Bank Stadium.
Matt Clark, Minnesota Student Association president in 2000 and 2001, worked alongside Carlson when bringing Gophers football back to campus was still an elusive dream.
“Back in 2000 … we were looking at every option, including having the Vikings play on campus at that same time,” Clark said.
He is now a lifetime member of the Alumni Association, he said. He attributes his motivation to join after he graduated in 2001 to Carlson’s strong leadership.
Clark said he and his wife give financially to the University, and his involvement in the Band Alumni Society — a program with more than 450 members offered through the Alumni Association — has allowed him to act as a mentor to current students in the band.
Clark also said that as part of the Legislative Network, he meets with state legislators to convince them to support the University, despite Minnesota’s rough financial outlook.
Carlson said she is most proud of this level of alumni involvement on campus. Alumni advocacy has become a staple since she has been CEO.
“Presidents come and go,” Carlson said. “Faculty come and go. Alumni are the only permanent shareholders of the University of Minnesota.”
The path-breaker
Carlson said she was inspired by her mother in her leadership role.
“My mother was a path-breaker. She was in education for 28 years, and when she retired she ran for the Kansas Legislature,” Carlson said. “She became the first female Catholic democratic legislator out of Dodge City, Kansas.”
Carlson earned her bachelor’s and master’s degrees at Kansas State University. She moved to Minnesota with her husband, Cal, in 1966 and spent 42 of the years that followed as either an employee or a student at the University.
In 1983 she earned her doctorate degree in educational administration and public policy.
After a three-year stint as executive director of the Minnesota chapter of the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation, she became head of the growing Alumni Association, which has doubled in membership since she took the helm.
Carlson meticulously plans her day, waking early to utilize the quiet time by herself and make her to-do list.
The rest of her day is filled with meetings: breakfast, lunch and committee meetings with a handful of phone calls, a couple surprises and a crisis “that often happens,” Carlson said.
“I don’t know how she finds the time to sleep,” McLeod said.
Carlson said her job keeps her busy seven days a week, but she loves her work.
Originally, she planned to stay for five years. Now, 25 years, an alumni center and a Gophers-only stadium later, Carlson is taking her passion to a national higher-education consulting firm and leaving her job behind.
“I came from Kansas, and this has been my love and my life ever since,” she said.

-Taryn Wobbema is a senior staff reporter.