JOIN US IN HONORING THE 2020 BETTY AWARD WINNERS IN A VIRTUAL EVENT DECEMBER 15TH. AWARD-WINNING JOURNALIST AND AUTHOR ANNA QUINDLEN WILL DELIVER THE KEYNOTE ADDRESS AND JOEL QUADRACCI OF QUAD WILL PRESENT REMARKS.
Juli Kaufmann’s professional ethos boils down to a simple, driving question: Why? “I ask the question because I want different outcomes,” says Kaufmann, president of Fix Development, a commercial real estate company with a focus of sustainability and community-building.
Why, for example, don’t developers build in low-income neighborhoods? Or, why shouldn’t new construction be welcoming to all? Such questions have led Kaufmann to help build more than $25 million in Milwaukee-area projects, all of them impressive, innovative and located in some of the city’s most neglected communities.
Among them, Sherman Phoenix, a food hall housed in a former bank that was damaged during the 2016 riots, and The Tandem, Caitlin Cullen’s Lindsay Heights restaurant. The risk that comes with disrupting the status quo is precisely what motivates Kaufmann.
“Risk is a sister to belief,” she says. “What I’m more concerned with is the risk of doing nothing at all.”
Juli Kaufmann is one of the 2020 recipients of a Betty Award. Each year, Milwaukee Magazine presents these awards as a tribute to the late Betty Quadracci, the magazine’s former publisher who founded Quad/Graphics with her husband Harry. Read more about this year’s honorees here.
