This is one of an occasional series intended to paint a cumulative portrait of our Jewish community.
Individuals for this column are selected at random from the Milwaukee Jewish Federation community database. The Chronicle does not have access to donor information, or contact members of the community with regard to their giving habits.
Today we focus on Reesa Gottschalk.
Glendale resident Reesa Gottschalk says that her profession, health information manager, “is a well-kept secret.”
Amidst the lunch hour bustle in the cafeteria at the Clement J. Zablocki VA Medical Center, where Gottschalk met with The Chronicle, she talked about how her work at the hospital provides her the sense of “doing something worthwhile” for patients, without necessarily having to be “hands-on” as a physician would be.
Gottschalk, 55, has worked at the hospital for three years. In her current role, she trains employees, physicians, and students at the hospital how to use electronic medical records. She also advocates for confidentiality and security of patient information, she said.
Gottschalk came about her profession in a “serendipitous” way, she said.
Born in Canada, her family moved to San Diego when she was young. She lived there until after college, when she moved to Milwaukee with her husband Irving, who was attending graduate school at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.
Though Gottschalk had earned a bachelor’s degree in English, once in Milwaukee she met someone who told her about a health information administration program beginning at UWM.
That gave Gottschalk enough time to get in some prerequisite courses before beginning the program, and she was a member of the program’s first graduating class. And “it’s turned out to be a fabulous field to be in,” she said.
In the years that followed, Gottschalk created her own health information consulting business, and taught as an adjunct faculty member at UWM in the health information program.
In 2001, she earned her master’s degree in medical informatics through a combined program at Milwaukee School of Engineering and the Medical College of Wisconsin.
She has also written a book about technical training that was published through a professional association.
‘Instantly smitten’
“Reesa has always had a strong desire to accomplish things, and she has certainly done so,” said her husband Irving.
Gottschalk says that when he met his future wife at the age of 15, through the pair’s involvement in sister-brother chapters of B’nai B’rith Youth Organization, he was “instantly smitten.”
“I wasted no time in asking her to that spring’s junior prom,” he said, which at the time was about eight months away. They were married at age 21.
The couple has one daughter, Lauren, who is 24. After attending Brandeis University, she married and lives in Boston. The pair travel to visit her often, Reesa said.
Though they also travel to visit their family members back in California, Milwaukee remains the couple’s home. After so many years living here, Gottschalk said she is “close to being a native.”
There is a “good quality of life” here, in Milwaukee, Gottschalk said, and she and her husband “have a wonderful group of friends that have become family.”
Gottschalk and her husband are also deeply involved with Congregation Shir Hadash. She serves on its adult education committee and participates in the Rosh Chodesh group. Her husband is synagogue president.
According to her husband, Gottschalk is also an “accomplished baker, whose chocolate chip cookies are legendary among our friends and a big attraction at our synagogue’s annual fund-raiser silent auction.”
Gottschalk also enjoys preparing Jewish foods like her grandmother made, such as kugel and brisket.
But besides being a hard worker and a good cook, said her husband, Gottschalk is also a “devoted and dedicated mother,” providing a role model to their daughter “for conscientiousness and empathy for others.” And she “is a supportive and caring companion for me, my closest friend and confidante.”
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