Distinguished Alumnus of the Year Award

Robert W. Hau, Bus Ad ’87
Mequon, Wis.

Back when he was a student at Marquette, Robert Hau remembers shopping in the Boston Store in downtown Milwaukee. Today, as executive vice president and chief financial officer for Fiserv, Bob is leading the effort to establish Fiserv’s new corporate headquarters in the former Boston Store building.

He loves that his current role at Fiserv, a payment and fintech firm, allows him to “get involved in essentially anything and everything in our company,” he explains. His work with Fiserv involved the sixth largest merger of the year in 2019 and the second largest in the payment industry. He’s also on the board of directors for OpenText, an information management company.

Outside of work, Bob’s family continues to grow. He and his wife, Chris, Arts ’87, have six adult daughters as well as two boys, ages 5 and 6, whom they adopted after serving as their foster parents. The couple has fostered a total of seven boys over the years. “It has been interesting ‘starting over’ after raising six children,” Bob explains.

He lives out the service piece of the Marquette mission as a member of the board of directors for Sharp Literacy in Milwaukee and sits on the finance department advisory board in the College of Business Administration and on the university’s President’s Advisory Council.

Bob credits Marquette with giving him the chance to meet Chris, to whom he’s been married for 36 years, and with educating three of his daughters. “I’ve been incredibly blessed in my life,” he says, “and Marquette is one of the biggest blessings.”

Fun Facts:

Name someone (past or present) with whom you’d like to have dinner
If I had to limit it to one person, it would be my father. He passed away suddenly at 73. He raised six children, loving each one of us with a calm and steady hand. All managed to graduate college (or earn advanced degrees) and all are contributing to society in a meaningful way.

Name a Marquette faculty or staff member who had an impact on you.
Dr. Craig Andrews, professor of marketing. Between my junior and senior years at Marquette, Chris and I had our first child. We had an unexpected problem with daycare, and I visited my professors to explain that I might miss classes until we found a solution. (Marquette had mandatory attendance then.) Every professor expressed full support, but Dr. Andrews went one step further and said I should feel free to bring my daughter to class with me. I never had to do that, but I never forgot his empathy and support.

Leave a congratulatory message for Bob!