Outstanding Recent Alumnus Award
2013 Recipients
Zach Halmstad '04
Zach Halmstad, who graduated from UW-Eau Claire in 2004 with a degree in music and theater arts, will receive the Outstanding Recent Alumnus Award, which acknowledges special achievements and great promise of alumni who are within 15 years of their graduation from UW-Eau Claire.
Halmstad is the co-founder of JAMF Software, a company that produces the only Mac and iOS management software developed exclusively for the Apple platform. The clientele JAMF serves is evenly divided between educational institutions and commercial businesses, including Fortune 100 and Fortune 500 companies. Halmstad began developing the software while working as a student in UW-Eau Claire's Learning and Technology Services providing support to the university's Mac users.
Although JAMF has offices in New York, Cupertino, Calif., Amsterdam and Hong Kong, its primary offices are located in Eau Claire and Minneapolis. Of the 170 people working for the company, more than 90 of them are employed at the Eau Claire location, and more than 35 percent of those employees are UW-Eau Claire graduates. JAMF also has supported an internship program though UW-Eau Claire for the past three years and has hired at least 15 people from the program in fields ranging from computer science to English.
Halmstad continues to give back to the city of Eau Claire and the university. He contributed to the acquisition of one of the nation's largest jazz collections housed in McIntyre Library's special collections and archives department. The collection is named the John L. Buchholz Jazz Library after the UW-Eau Claire professor emeritus of English and longtime jazz musician and supporter of jazz studies.
JAMF also pledged $500,000 to support the construction of a new community arts center at the confluence of the Chippewa and Eau Claire rivers in downtown Eau Claire. The community arts center is the centerpiece of the public-private partnership known as the Confluence Project, a project that also includes plans to construct a commercial/retail complex and university student housing at the downtown site. The $500,000 pledge would help fund the construction of, and give JAMF Software naming rights associated with, the community arts center's 250-seat black box theater.
