Michael Gauger is MYSO’s Philanthropy Officer – Foundations and Institutional Giving. Michael’s job is to tell MYSO’s story — a story of nurturing, challenging, and inspiring young musicians, a story of lifelong impact on students, audiences, and our community – to raise grant funding for our programs.

Michael has been honored to work in the public interest, first in daily journalism and then in philanthropy. He joined MYSO in October 2021 after 11 years as a grant writer for community health and hospital programs for Ascension Wisconsin Foundations. Earlier, he worked for 20 years as a copy editor at the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and The Milwaukee Journal.

Outside philanthropy, Michael writes and edits for scholarly publications in American history and political science. He has a bachelor’s degree in mass communications-journalism and a master’s degree in history, both from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. He also attended graduate school in history and political science at UW-Madison and the University of Michigan.