With the 2024 version of the Governor’s Business Plan Contest set to culminate June 5-6 at the annual Wisconsin Entrepreneurs’ Conference in Milwaukee, it’s an ideal time to ask: What happened to some of the past winners?

Learn more about three of those winners – all women who used the contest as a springboard for their businesses – by attending the Thursday, May 9 Tech Council Innovation Network luncheon at the UW-Milwaukee Innovation Accelerator, 1225 Discovery Parkway, Wauwatosa.

Panelists thus far include:

• Katy Jinkins, co-founder and chief executive officer of SixLine Semiconductor. This is a Middleton-based company working with tiny but powerful conductive materials for wireless devices and computing. It won the grand prize of the 2023 BPC
• Laura King, who won the 2014 BPC with her former company Elucent Medical, a medical device company that developed a new detection system for locating breast cancer for surgical procedures.

Other panelists will be announced soon. Joe Kremer, director of the Tech Council Investor Networks, will moderate this event.

Registration, networking and hors d’oeuvres start at 11:30 a.m. and the presentation at 12:30 p.m. The cost is $10 for students and returning veterans, $25 for individual members, $35 for non-members and included for Tech Council corporate members.