$10 million gift from Steve and Sue Wilson will name part of Kellogg’s new executive center
Stephen R. and Susan K. Wilson first came to Northwestern in the late 1960s.
More than 50 years later, their names will be on the entrance to the university’s newest building.
The Kellogg School of Management announced that the couple has given $10 million to support the new Ann McIlrath Drake Executive Center.
In return, the building’s north campus entrance, including its lobby and reception area, will be named the Stephen R. and Susan K. Wilson Family North Lobby.
It’s a fitting choice for a couple who have spent decades welcoming people into Northwestern.
The lobby will be one of the main entrances to the building, greeting people arriving from the Kellogg Global Hub and the north campus parking lots. It will have direct views of Lake Michigan and the Promenade, and it is designed to be bright and ornamental.
Students, faculty, alumni, staff, and visiting executives will walk through it to reach many of the center’s busiest spaces.
For many, it will be their first impression of Kellogg.
“Our family has always believed that a great university is built one generation at a time, and we have been fortunate to see that happen firsthand at Northwestern,” Steve Wilson said.
“This building will bring together students, faculty, and business leaders from around the world, and we wanted the very first space they experienced—the entrance and lobby—to reflect the ambition and warmth of this community.”
Both Wilsons graduated from Northwestern in 1970. Steve earned his undergraduate degree in sociology at the Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences.
He then served two years in the U.S. Army, stationed in Germany during the Vietnam War, before coming back to Evanston for business school. At Kellogg, he learned corporate finance and mergers and acquisitions from Al Rappaport and accounting from the late Lawrence Revsine, a teacher he credited with making the subject interesting. Former Dean Donald P. Jacobs brought what Wilson called “real-world perspective” to his classes on banking and regulation.
During the summer between his two years of the MBA program, he interned in the finance department at Inland Steel in Chicago. The company offered him a job before he graduated in 1974.
He stayed at Inland for 17 years, working in finance and corporate planning. He helped finance the company’s 1980s joint venture with Nippon Steel, which built a half-billion-dollar continuous cold rolling mill in Indiana. In 1991 he joined CF Industries as senior vice president and chief financial officer.
At the time, the company was a struggling cooperative owned by Midwestern farmers. Wilson became president and CEO in 2003 and chairman in 2005. He took the company public, strengthened its board, hired a management team that included fellow Kellogg alumni, and turned CF into a global leader in nitrogen fertilizer. In 2008, as the financial crisis hit nearly every industry, the company reported record profits of $685 million.
He retired as chairman and CEO in 2014.
Wilson has always given much of the credit for that career to his Kellogg education. He also learned there that a business succeeds as a group. “It’s very important in business that it be about ‘we,'” he once told Kellogg’s alumni magazine. “If we succeed as a team, the individuals succeed.” The same idea runs through the family’s giving.
Sue Wilson has shaped Northwestern’s cultural life in her own right. She serves on the Northwestern Women’s Board and has served on the Block Museum of Art’s Board of Advisors. The couple created the Susan and Stephen Wilson Block Museum Engagement Fund, and they also supported the School of Education and Social Policy.
“Every time we have made a gift to this university, we have done so because we know what happens when talented people are given the right spaces to connect and grow,” she said.
“We can’t wait to see students gather in that lobby, looking out at the lake, on their way into everything Kellogg has to offer.”
Their names are already familiar to Northwestern sports fans.
The Wilsons made a lead gift that named Wilson Field inside Ryan Fieldhouse.
They were also among the lead donors behind the renovation of Welsh-Ryan Arena, where the Wilson Club carries their name. When the arena reopened in 2018, Steve said he and Sue were proud to support the project, “following the great leadership of the Ryans.” He has served on the university’s Board of Trustees for many years and was on the steering committee of Northwestern’s We Will campaign.
The couple’s giving is a family affair: their son, Jeffrey, earned his Kellogg MBA in 2008, and their daughter, Elizabeth, also contributes to the family’s philanthropy.
“Steve and Sue Wilson embody what it means to be lifelong stewards of this university and dedicated supporters of the Wildcats,” said Northwestern President Mung Chiang. “From athletics to the arts, and now to one of the most visible spaces in Kellogg’s new executive center, the Wilsons’ generosity has touched many corners of our campus.”
Kellogg Dean Francesca Cornelli said the lobby suits the couple. “Steve and Sue have spent decades showing up for Northwestern—through their support of our students, our student-athletes, and now the very entrance of our newest building,” she said. “Their gift ensures that the first experience anyone has of this center is one of light, welcome, and possibility. That is exactly the spirit they’ve brought to this community for more than 50 years.”
The building they are helping to open is one of the most ambitious projects in Kellogg’s history. The Ann McIlrath Drake Executive Center is named for Ann McIlrath Drake, a 1984 Kellogg MBA whose philanthropy to the school totals $70 million. It is scheduled to open in fall 2027 on the Lake Michigan shoreline, next to the Global Hub and connected by an underground corridor.
It will be the new home of Kellogg’s Executive MBA and Executive Education programs, with hybrid classrooms that combine in-person and virtual learning, and it will have academic space for students in every Kellogg program. Once it opens, all of Kellogg will be together on one part of the Evanston campus.
The Wilsons join a group of longtime supporters who have each committed $10 million or more to the building. They include trustees T. Bondurant French, Christopher B. Galvin with Cynthia B. Galvin, Kimberly K. Querrey with her late husband Louis A. Simpson, and Michael S. and Mary Sue Shannon. The center is the centerpiece of Kellogg’s $600 million Full Circle Campaign.
As of March, the campaign had raised 56 percent of its goal.
When the doors open next fall, the first room visitors walk into will carry the Wilson family name.
It will look out over the same lake Steve and Sue Wilson saw as students more than half a century ago.