If there is one thing Wisconsin is known for, it is cheese. Helping make sure that fact stays top of mind is James Robson ’66, chief executive officer of the Wisconsin Milk Marketing Board.
Wisconsin produces more cheese than any other state in the nation — a staggering 2.397 billion pounds annually. From the more than 15,000 Wisconsin dairy farms flow more than 22 billion pounds of milk, making the dairy market the largest segment of the state’s economy.
In a nation where per-capita annual cheese consumption is projected to grow from 31 pounds to 34 pounds by 2014, there’s opportunity for continued market growth.
Robson has been at the helm of the marketing board since 2001, overseeing its programs, meeting with retailers and food-service operators and attending trade shows.
“One fun area we work in is cheese education,” he said. “We put on seminars for chefs and others in the restaurant business about cheese—how it’s made, what types there are, how to use it, which wines or beers are best paired with which cheeses, and on and on.”
His position in Wisconsin is a far cry from his first job at the Seven Up Bottling Co. in Galveston, where he worked during high school and on holidays and summers during his first three years at Lamar.
After graduating from Lamar, Robson married and left Beaumont for the Air Force, which sent him to posts including Cam Ranh Bay Air Force Base in South Vietnam. After his discharge in 1970, he moved to Houston to start a career in grocery sales.
“I had made sales calls and deliveries for the Seven Up Bottling Co. and the Royal Crown Cola Co.,” said Robson. “I guess that’s what led to me get into the food business.”
He started with Lipton Tea as a sales representative and, in 1972, transferred to Corpus Christi, where he stayed until 1978.
There, Robson continued his education, earning a MBA in management from Texas A&I University. Lipton promoted him to unit sales manager in 1979, and he moved to Charlotte, N.C., only to be recruited by Frito Lay as a regional sales manager. He moved to Savannah, Ga., then to Birmingham. Robson was soon recruited by The Southland Corp. to be general manager of Oak Farms Dairy in Houston.
Over the next three years, he was steadily promoted from Cabell’s Dairy in Dallas to MorningStar Foods in Maryland, back to Dallas and finally to Seattle in 1990, when he was named vice president of sales, marketing
and transportation for Darigold Inc. In 1996, Robson returned to Houston and formed his own company, TRG Consulting, where he worked with dairy companies, food processors, distributors, brokers and retailers. In 2000, Robson received a call from a recruiter searching for a CEO for the Wisconsin Milk Marketing Board.
Today, Robson finds his work for the marketing board exciting, but he remembers his time at Lamar as a little more relaxed. “I have great memories of my four years at Lamar,” he said. “No one could have had more fun than I did.”
He pledged Sigma Phi Epsilon, which made him keep up his grades, but also gave him a social outlet. “We could party with the best of them, but we were also successful in sports and other Greek activities.”
When deciding on colleges, he thought of places like Lubbock or Denton as “the other side of the world,” and liked the idea of being closer to home. With three years of running track at Ball High, Lamar’s top track program also caught his eye. He later changed his mind about running, but still liked the idea that Lamar’s business school was as good as, if not better than, those of other Texas schools.
“I have worked all over the U.S. with people with degrees from many universities,” he said. “A lot of those universities may be better known than Lamar, but you don’t have to take a back seat to anyone with your Lamar education.”
