Wisconsin Candidate For Governor Mandela Barnes On His Vision for Tech and Innovation.
His take on innovation, startups, AI accountability, and why Wisconsin has everything it needs to compete if we're willing to invest in it.
NOTE: This article is not an endorsement for Mandela Barnes. The purpose was to have a conversation about his vision for technology and innovation for the state. I have asked all eight Wisconsin gubernatorial candidates to join me on this platform for the same conversation and coverage. This is the final of the five who have responded. I never heard a thing from Tom Tiffany, Francesca Hong, or Sara Rodriguez.
The full audio of my conversation with Mandela can be found at the end of this article. But here’s a preview.
Mandela’s Quick Bio:
Former Lieutenant Governor of Wisconsin and U.S. Senate candidate.
A Milwaukee native and vocal advocate for economic equity, he’s championed policies that expand access to tech, education, and opportunity for communities too often left behind by innovation.
Now running for governor, Barnes is making the case that Wisconsin’s best days are ahead, if the state invests in its schools, retains its homegrown talent, and holds corporations accountable as AI reshapes the workforce.
Quick Interview Summary:
Mandela Barnes makes the case that Wisconsin has everything it needs to compete: affordable cost of living, homegrown talent, and a deep manufacturing and innovation heritage, but has to stop letting that talent walk out the door to Chicago, New York, and LA.
On AI, he’s direct that it’s not a train that can be stopped, but companies using it to eliminate good-paying jobs should be denied the tax incentives they’ve grown accustomed to receiving.
From fully funding public schools to increasing support for the UW system, Barnes sees education as the foundation for making Wisconsin a state where startups can scale and workers can thrive in the age of AI.
He draws a straight line from his grandfather’s union steel job in Milwaukee to today’s workforce disruptions and argues that if we’ve seen this story before with factory closures and offshoring, we can’t afford to repeat the same mistakes with artificial intelligence.
Let’s hear it for Concurrency and Secure Compliance Solutions! Their financial support keeps the Experience Milwaukee machine running so I can bring stories like this to life!
I wasn’t sure what to expect from this interview with Mandela.
For the last couple years, of all the candidates running for governor in Wisconsin right now, I’ve spent the most time talking with Mandela. And watching him mingle at events.
He shows up.
Not just at the “who’s who” type of events. All the events.
That’s what I’ve always admired about him.
So when I had the chance to chat with him on his vision for tech in Wisconsin, I was curious as to what his point of view would be. Because this is something, whether in person or text, we’d never really talked about.
The first thing you notice about Mandela is his calmness.
Maybe it’s more a quiet passion for the stuff that’s required of someone to run for a public position like governor.
In our conversation, he maintained an even tone. He never overcomplicated his dialogue, whether about politics or technology. And he tied it all together from beginning to end with perspective from the past, present, and future.
It’s hard not to like a someone who keeps it real.
So where do we go from here?
Like all the candidates, Mandela shared the “we need to…” perspective for tech, innovation, and our state’s economy. Which, in a way, was reassuring that the things that are important to Milwaukee’s tech community are also on the mind of whichever one of these candidates becomes our future state leader.
Funding education. Increasing resources, specifically financial resources, for companies to start, grow, and stay here. Keeping the talent we develop engaged and living here long term. Will whoever wins the election get these things done?
Because whether gross domestic product, talent drain, investment per capita, people moving away, and more, Milwaukee is not just trailing cities that used to be peers, we’re continuing to fall behind.
The time is now to unify the state on a vision for how Wisconsin participates not just nationally, but globally, in the tech economy. Today, we do not have such a vision.
Whether our next governor is Mandela Barnes or any of the other candidates I’ve talked to, we need a strong vision with even stronger follow through. Urgently.
Here’s my full interview with Mandela. You can also listen on Spotify.