Campus Connection

Alumna uses psychology degree to transform her father’s company into a multi-division corporation

[caption id="attachment_5925" align="alignright" width="225"] Jennifer Hansen, ’93, is a successful entrepreneur who started out as a UWL psychology major. Her story was recently featured in BizTimes Magazine.[/caption] Jennifer Hansen, ’93, wasn’t interested in working for her father’s distribution company after graduating from UWL with a degree in psychology. But after taking over the business in 2003, she’s become an entrepreneurial success story, recently featured in BizTimes Magazine. After graduating from UWL, Hansen had plans to go to graduate school for social work at UW-Milwaukee. Working at her father’s company which sold o-rings and rubber seals to equipment manufacturers, didn’t sound appealing, she recalls. But when Hansen’s father, Phil Anderson, formally invited her to work for the company, she told him she’d give him a year. “I figured I had nothing to lose,” she says. Today Hansen is glad she decided to take a chance with her father’s business, Anderson Seal. She eventually purchased the company from her father in 2003 and formed the company into the Anderson Group with 74 employees and millions in annual sales. She then sold the seal business, Anderson Seal, to Trelleborg. Hansen has remained as the general manager for Anderson Seal and is the owner of Anderson Packaging, a separate company she started. Hansen says she transformed the business by “focusing on customer needs and how to efficiently operate to exceed their goals.” As Hansen started a career in an industry she didn’t know, she had to learn on-the-go — managing new tasks in areas from sales to human resources to information technology. “I learned by doing,” she says. “I use my psychology education daily. Also, about 45 percent of my employees are Hispanic, so my minor in Spanish comes in very handy.” Hansen was recently featured in BizTimes, Milwaukee Business News.