CDL-Wisconsin is located at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and currently hosts two specialized streams in Risk and Health & Wellness. The program leverages academic expertise and knowledge at the Wisconsin School of Business and the technical prowess of the School of Computing, Data and Information Sciences to seed tech entrepreneurship. Additional domain expertise is provided by the School of Medicine and Public Health and the Center for Healthy Minds. 

Through a partnership with American Family Insurance, CDL-Wisconsin offers a Risk stream that supports ventures who can help transform society’s ability to manage risk. Example technologies and innovations might include enhancing or improving risk management processes, addressing new types of risk such as climate and cybersecurity, loss prevention and mitigation, wearables/IoT devices, or unique data and AI/ML models to drive improved decision making.

CDL-Wisconsin’s Health & Wellness stream is focused on enhancing well-being and improving resilience through preventing, diagnosing and treating medical conditions. This stream primarily engages with ventures who bring medical technology, digital health, healthcare platform, and wellness innovations to market. 

CDL-Wisconsin Mentors have backgrounds as operators, investors or scientists in a variety of different industries. All Mentors ▶︎

CDL Risk

For founders developing transformational technologies in risk management.

CDL Health & Wellness

CDL-Wisconsin’s Health & Wellness Stream supports teams bringing medical technology, digital health, healthcare platform, and wellness innovations to market.

“Building on the success of the CDL-Wisconsin Risk Stream launched last year, CDL-Wisconsin Health & Wellness is similarly focused on helping new companies with the potential to enhance resilience in society”

Tom Erickson, Founding Director of the School of Computing, Data and Information Sciences

“Now, more than ever, we can see why entrepreneurship and advancements in data science and technology applied to risk management is critical to the insurance industry and society in general. Our involvement with these innovative startups in the very early stages will provide invaluable insights for us, and established resources to help them succeed.”

Bill Westrate, President of American Family Insurance

“Entrepreneurship is a critical ingredient to enable new innovations to reach the people who would most benefit. We’re seeing this with the pandemic and the massive acceleration to telehealth and other technologies. We’re enthusiastic about working with CDL to both share insights from our experts and to learn from the entrepreneurs and business mentors who are building the next generation of high-impact health and wellness tech companies.”

Richard Davidson, the William James and Vilas Professor of Psychology and Psychiatry, director of the Center for Healthy Minds and president of the affiliated nonprofit Healthy Minds Innovations

For more information, please contact cdl-wisconsin@creativedestructionlab.com.