Pete retired from work with IF in July 2023, but continues to advise as needed as a Fellow Emeritus. Previously, as a Fellow and Projects Administrator, Pete worked on community conversations series, a variety of individual partnership and facilitator training projects, the Foundation’s website, as well as sustained discussion projects, including three long-term discussion projects that produced published discussion guides:  Food (2011), Crime & Punishment, (2013), and Tomorrow’s News:  the Future of Journalism and Our News Media, (2016).

A recovering lawyer, Pete practiced law with the firm of LaFollette Godfrey & Kahn in Madison (1998-2005). His law practice focused primarily on development-stage and university-related companies, mostly in the life sciences. From 1993-1997, Pete was an assistant city attorney in College Station, Texas.

Pete has a law degree, cum laude, and a masters degree in public policy and administration, both from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Pete was an articles editor for the Wisconsin Law Review, which published his article on lender liability. He graduated from Northwestern University in 1985 with a B.A. in history and political science.

Pete and his wife Ruth, herself a recovering political theorist, live in Madison. When not reading and arguing over matters of political philosophy, he enjoys bicycling in the Wisconsin countryside, woodworking, hiking, canoeing, and–with somewhat greater regularity–the comparing and contrasting of many varieties of micro & craft-brewed beers.