11 files on the desk from Pewaukee, Wisconsin. 11 carry a net-worth figure.
College athletics administrator; former NFL offensive tackle · Pewaukee, Wisconsin
Pewaukee High; Wisconsin Badgers captain and unanimous All-American (1999); Seahawks first-round pick; UW athletic director 2021–2026; Big Ten deputy commissioner
$1,450,000
Chris McIntosh is Pewaukee’s other first-round football product—the 6-foot-7 Pirate who became a Badgers captain, Seahawks draft pick, Wisconsin athletic director, and Big Ten deputy commissioner. Raised in the village, he still frames the job the way Pewaukee framed the kid: develop people who can win Saturdays and the decades after.
He was born in Pewaukee on February 20, 1977, and played at Pewaukee High School. Late in high school, after a wrestling state title, he tore knee ligaments, redshirted at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, then anchored the offensive line for back-to-back Rose Bowl champions. In 1999 he was a unanimous All-American and Big Ten Offensive Lineman of the Year. Seattle took him twenty-second overall in 2000. He started ten games as a rookie before a neck injury limited him and forced retirement before the 2003 season. After health-and-wellness startups, Barry Alvarez recruited him back in 2014 as business-development lead; as associate athletic director he helped land Wisconsin’s ten-year Under Armour apparel deal valued at more than $100 million. He rose to deputy AD, entered the UW Athletic Hall of Fame in 2014—the same year he rejoined the department—and succeeded Alvarez in 2021, just the third Wisconsin athletic director since 1989. His tenure covered the Luke Fickell and Mike Hastings hires, a major football practice-facility project, and the NIL and transfer upheaval. A July 2024 five-year extension set 2024–25 compensation at $1.45 million.
In April 2026 he resigned to become the Big Ten’s first Deputy Commissioner for Strategy. A first-generation college graduate with UW degrees in agricultural economics and educational leadership, he belongs on the Pewaukee page by birth and high school, with Madison as the career arc that followed.
Screenwriter and film director · Pewaukee, Wisconsin
Born Pewaukee, June 9, 1963; UCLA film BFA 1990; screenwriter of Jurassic Park, Mission: Impossible, Spider-Man; novelist and director
$4,000,000
David Koepp left Pewaukee with a Midwestern movie habit and became one of Hollywood's highest-grossing screenwriters. Born there on June 9, 1963, the youngest of four, he grew up watching Hitchcock with his therapist mother and Godzilla on late-night television while his father ran a billboard company. He tried acting at the University of Minnesota and at Wisconsin–Madison, then transferred to UCLA's film school in 1984 and took a BFA in 1990.
His scripts powered the modern studio-blockbuster era: Jurassic Park and The Lost World for Steven Spielberg, Mission: Impossible for Brian De Palma, Spider-Man for Sam Raimi, War of the Worlds, and two later Indiana Jones entries. As a director he has delivered Stir of Echoes, Secret Window, Premium Rush, and You Should Have Left. Domestic box-office tallies place him among the top handful of writers in studio history, and he returned to dinosaurs with Jurassic World Rebirth after more than two decades away from the franchise. In The Lost World: Jurassic Park he also appears on screen as the unlucky San Diego man eaten by a T. rex, a cameo while he served as second-unit director.
Columbia paid him about $4 million in February 2000 for the Panic Room package, among the richest single-script deals of its era. Writers Guild East gave him the Ian McLellan Hunter Award for Career Achievement in 2013. He has published thrillers including Cold Storage and Aurora and keeps threading Wisconsin into the work through parent names, Midwestern settings, and the sense that ordinary places can hold extraordinary plots. Pewaukee remains the origin story he cites when asked how a kid from lake country ended up inventing Mr. DNA.
Former NFL fullback · Pewaukee, Wisconsin
Middle Watt brother; Pewaukee High class of 2011; Wisconsin Badgers fullback; Chargers and Steelers, 2016–2023
$12.2 million
Derek John Watt is the middle Watt brother who made his name as a fullback and lead blocker rather than a sack artist. Born in Waukesha on November 7, 1992, he starred at Pewaukee High School, class of 2011, and was named the Associated Press Wisconsin Player of the Year in 2010 as a two-way back and linebacker. He and younger brother T.J. were already teammates in maroon and gold before either reached the NFL; older brother J.J., five years ahead, never got that high-school or college reunion.
At Wisconsin he stayed a Badger fullback, and the San Diego Chargers took him in the sixth round of the 2016 draft. Four seasons in San Diego and Los Angeles as a lead blocker and special-teamer set up a three-year, $9.75 million deal with the Pittsburgh Steelers in 2020, the contract that finally put him on the same NFL roster as T.J. In Week 2 of that first Steelers season he blocked a punt for a safety against Denver. He retired from the NFL in March 2024 after seven seasons; Spotrac career cash through retirement ran to about $12.2 million.
Pewaukee retired his No. 16 alongside T.J.'s No. 20 in May 2023; J.J.'s No. 9 had already come down in 2013. The place claim is Waukesha birth and a Pewaukee upbringing that produced three NFL brothers from one high-school program. Derek's lane was the fullback's: short yardage, kick coverage, and the quiet work that keeps a skill group honest.
Physician; tobacco litigation lead plaintiff · Pewaukee, Wisconsin
Pediatrician and lead plaintiff in Florida's landmark Engle tobacco class action; born on a Pewaukee farm
$2,500,000
Howard Aaron Engle was born on a Pewaukee farm to Eastern European Jewish immigrants, the area's only Jewish family, and became the pediatrician whose name still defines American tobacco litigation. He earned undergraduate and medical degrees at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, served in Army public health in occupied Germany after World War II, then built a nearly fifty-year pediatric neurology practice in Miami Beach, including an integrated Liberty City office and a turn as chief of pediatrics at Mount Sinai Medical Center.
A two-pack-a-day smoker since medical school, he joined a 1994 Florida class action as lead plaintiff for attorneys Stanley and Susan Rosenblatt, whose children he had treated, hoping the case would warn others off nicotine. In July 2000 a Miami jury hit cigarette makers with roughly $145 billion in punitive damages, then one of the largest awards in U.S. history. Appeals courts later decertified the class as too sprawling, but the Florida Supreme Court preserved individual Engle progeny suits that still populate Florida dockets. A May 2001 ruling let the companies post a $2 billion appeal bond, of which about $709 million was guaranteed to plaintiffs; Engle's personal cut was reported in the hundreds of thousands.
He died in Miami Beach on July 22, 2009, of COPD and lymphoma at eighty-nine, still smoking until shortly before hospice. The Pewaukee farm kid who warned patients not to smoke never fully quit himself; the docket that bears his name outlived him.
Professional basketball player · Pewaukee, Wisconsin
Pewaukee-born shooting guard; Oakland University March Madness hero vs. Kentucky; G League / overseas pro
$400,000
Jack Gohlke is the Pewaukee shooting specialist who made March Madness look like a three-point clinic. A 6-foot-3 guard out of Pewaukee High School, he turned a Division II résumé and one Horizon League season at Oakland University into a national highlight reel, then kept playing for pay from summer league to overseas clubs and the G League.
Born in Pewaukee on December 3, 1999, he spent four seasons at Hillsdale College, reaching the Division II Elite Eight as a junior and earning first-team All-G-MAC honors as a senior before using COVID eligibility to transfer to Oakland for 2023–24. That year he was Horizon League Sixth Man of the Year in a season when 97 percent of his field-goal attempts were threes—364 of 372 tries from beyond the arc. In the NCAA Tournament’s first round he hit ten three-pointers for 32 points as 14-seed Oakland beat 3-seed Kentucky 80–76, a single-game three total among the highest in tournament history and the spark for a wave of NIL deals.
Undrafted in 2024, he moved from Oklahoma City’s Summer League to Montenegro’s KK Podgorica, the Wisconsin Herd, the Motor City Cruise, Mexico’s Ángeles, Brazil’s Fortaleza, and, in February 2026, the Dallas Mavericks’ G League affiliate, the Texas Legends. Between flights he still hosts shooting camps in Pewaukee classrooms he once walked. The hometown claim is straightforward: born, raised, and still teaching the shot that put Pewaukee on the bracket map.
NFL general manager · Pewaukee, Wisconsin
NFL general manager of the Las Vegas Raiders; raised in Pewaukee; Catholic Memorial High School
$6 million
John Spytek grew up in Pewaukee and turned a Michigan linebacker's résumé into the general manager's chair for the Las Vegas Raiders. Born in August 1980, the son of Wisconsin alumni whose father played Badger baseball, he starred as a two-way end at Catholic Memorial High School in Waukesha under Bill Young. As a senior he earned first-team all-league honors on defense and second-team on offense; across his three starting seasons Memorial went 30–4 with a state title and two runner-up finishes. He chose Ann Arbor over other Big Ten offers because he never wanted to wonder what if Michigan.
He played outside linebacker for the Wolverines from 1999 to 2002, overlapping one season with Tom Brady, earned a general-studies degree and a sports-management master's, and entered the league as a Detroit Lions operations intern in 2004. Philadelphia scouting, Cleveland's director of college scouting at age twenty-nine, a Denver area and national scout role that produced a Super Bowl 50 ring, and nine Tampa Bay seasons as director of player personnel, vice president, and assistant general manager followed, capped by Super Bowl LV beside Brady again. Tampa Bay under his personnel tenure returned all twenty-two Super Bowl LV starters in 2021, the first salary-cap-era team to do so.
Owner Mark Davis named him the Raiders' sixth general manager on January 24, 2025, on a five-year deal. Off the field, he and his wife, Kristen, co-founded the National CMV Foundation after their daughter Evelyn died of congenital cytomegalovirus. Pewaukee still lists him as hometown; the league now lists him as the architect of a Silver and Black rebuild.
Former NFL defensive end · Pewaukee, Wisconsin
NFL defensive end and three-time Defensive Player of the Year; raised in Pewaukee, often listed as born in Waukesha
$130 million
Justin James “J.J.” Watt is the Pewaukee-raised defensive end who became a three-time NFL Defensive Player of the Year, a Walter Payton Man of the Year, and the face of a Texans defense that made Houston care about stop-the-run football. Birth records and older bios often place his birth in Waukesha and his raise next door in Pewaukee; the high-school banners say Pewaukee either way.
Hockey came first. He played travel teams that took him to Canada and Germany until money and scheduling pushed him toward football. At Pewaukee High he was a four-sport letterman and Woodland Conference Player of the Year. After leaving Central Michigan he mopped floors and delivered pizza at a Pewaukee Pizza Hut, then walked on at Wisconsin and became a first-round draft pick. His middle name honors paternal grandfather James; the family mantra from firefighter dad John was “Act like somebody.”
A 2014 six-year, $100 million extension briefly made him the NFL’s highest-paid non-quarterback. Off the field he raised tens of millions after Hurricane Harvey and, after the 2021 Waukesha Christmas parade tragedy, publicly offered funeral help for victims. Brothers Derek and T.J. also reached the NFL; this page is J.J. alone. The Wisconsin claim is Pewaukee raise and schooling, with Waukesha often listed on the birth certificate.
Politician; former Lieutenant Governor of Wisconsin · Pewaukee, Wisconsin
Wisconsin’s first woman lieutenant governor; born Kenosha, longtime Waukesha County politician; died at home in Pewaukee
$2 million
Margaret Farrow was Wisconsin’s first woman lieutenant governor, a long Waukesha County Republican who rose from Elm Grove village halls to Madison and never quite left public life. When Governor Tommy Thompson resigned for a federal cabinet post in 2001 and Scott McCallum moved up, McCallum appointed her lieutenant governor. She chaired work-based learning and women’s council efforts, co-chaired invasive-species work, and lost the 2002 ticket race to Jim Doyle and Barbara Lawton.
Born Margaret Ann Nemitz in Kenosha on November 28, 1934, to a Snap-on finance executive and a corporate assistant, she finished St. Catherine’s High School in Racine, sampled Rosary College, and earned degrees in political science and education at Marquette University. She taught, sold real estate, and raised five sons with her engineer husband, John, before Elm Grove politics pulled her in. Service on the village appeals board, plan commission, board of trustees, and as village president preceded election to the state Assembly in 1986 and twelve years in the state Senate from a Waukesha County district.
In later years she chaired WisconsinEye’s board, helped build Waukesha County’s business alliance, and served on the University of Wisconsin System Board of Regents from 2013 to 2017. Her son Paul followed her into the Assembly, the Senate, and the Waukesha County executive’s office. She died at eighty-seven at her home in Pewaukee on March 8, 2022, remembered as a fiscal conservative who treated other people’s money as other people’s money. Pewaukee was the final address after the Elm Grove years that launched her career.
Chief Growth Officer and Partner, insurance brokerage · Pewaukee, Wisconsin
M3 Insurance CGO/partner; husband of country singer Katrina Elam; Pewaukee resident. Not Dr. Nezih Z. Hasanoglu, DO (family medicine, New Berlin).
$5 million+
Nezih Hasanoglu Jr. is the chief growth officer and a partner at Wisconsin insurance brokerage M3 Insurance, where he steers business development, marketing, and mergers and acquisitions.
He joined M3 in 2004 after earning a bachelor's degree at Vanderbilt University, where he also played football, and later completed an MBA at the Wisconsin School of Business. Named a partner in 2013, he rose to executive vice president of business development in 2020 and to chief growth officer in 2022. He sits on M3's executive leadership team and holds Wisconsin life/health and property/casualty licenses.
Beyond the firm he serves on the Zoological Society of Milwaukee board—receiving its 2026 Emu Egg Award—and on boards including First Business Bank's Milwaukee advisory board and the Milwaukee Institute of Art & Design. He and his wife, Katrina, have co-chaired Milwaukee's Zoo Ball; their family is tied to Pewaukee, where a son has played high school baseball.
Political leader; businessman · Pewaukee, Wisconsin
Born Odilon Fish, June 16, 1925, Sauk Centre, Minnesota; longtime Pewaukee resident; died Feb. 6, 2007, at home in Pewaukee
$1,500,000
Ody J. Fish made Pewaukee a statewide Republican address. Born Odilon Fish in Sauk Centre, Minnesota, on June 16, 1925, he built a Waukesha County business and party career that put the lake town on Madison and Washington call sheets. He chaired and vice-chaired the Waukesha County GOP, managed Warren P. Knowles’s successful 1964 gubernatorial campaign, then ran the Republican Party of Wisconsin as state chairman from 1965 to 1970. Contemporary press routinely identified him as “of Pewaukee.”
From 1971 to 1984 he served as Wisconsin’s Republican National Committeeman and managed the 1976 Republican National Convention. A Milwaukee Journal Sentinel remembrance noted that he turned down a call from President Nixon rather than leave the independent lane he preferred. Parallel to party work, he sat on the University of Wisconsin Board of Regents from 1970 to 1997, spanning the system merger era, and later pressed campaign-finance and open-meeting reforms through Common Cause in Wisconsin.
He married Mary Ellen Koebke; they had two children. Fish died of esophageal cancer at his Pewaukee home on February 6, 2007, remembered as a party boss who called parties a “kinder mistress” than candidate-centered money politics.
NFL outside linebacker · Pewaukee, Wisconsin
NFL edge rusher for the Pittsburgh Steelers; youngest of the Watt brothers; born and raised in Pewaukee
$155 million
Trent Jordan “T.J.” Watt is the youngest of the Pewaukee Watt brothers and the Pittsburgh Steelers’ career sack leader. Where older brother J.J. became the face of Houston’s defense, T.J. built his own path as an edge rusher in black and gold, tying a single-season sack record and winning Defensive Player of the Year.
He was born in Pewaukee on October 11, 1994, and graduated from Pewaukee High School in 2013. That same year he won the Wisconsin state shot-put title, the third Watt to push the family mark their father John set in 1980. He followed J.J. and Derek to Wisconsin, missed most of his first two college seasons to injury, then erupted as a redshirt junior in 2016 with 11½ sacks and All-Big Ten honors. He played only twenty-two games as a Badger; fourteen of them came in that 2016 season, enough to make him a first-round pick.
Pittsburgh selected him in the first round in 2017. In 2021 he tied Michael Strahan’s single-season sack record at 22½ and won Defensive Player of the Year. He holds the Steelers’ career sack mark. Spotrac puts career cash at about $155 million through 2025. In May 2023 Pewaukee retired his No. 20 alongside Derek’s No. 16. The geography is the same Pewaukee raise as his brothers; the résumé is distinctly Pittsburgh.