FRI AM News: WisBusiness: the Podcast with Nick Lombardino and Zach Blumenfeld, CultureCon; European cheese makers claim top three spots in Madison contest

March 6, 2026

— This week’s episode of “WisBusiness: the Podcast” is with Nick Lombardino and Zach Blumenfeld, co-founders of CultureCon.

They created the workplace culture conference in 2017, and it’s since grown to more than 600 attendees at last year’s gathering. In addition to hosting annual events, the business provides online courses, consulting services and certification programs.

“It’s crazy, we’ve been doing this almost a decade ago,” Blumenfeld said. “Nick and I are both from Madison … We’ve purposefully kept CultureCon in Madison because we love bringing people from all over the world to our beautiful state, our beautiful city.”

The annual event has its roots in executive roundtable discussions hosted by Blumenfeld’s software company called ThirdSpace, which aimed to “pressure test” ideas on workplace culture.

“They would always run late because people would get so passionate about their people, their culture, and so I always thought like, maybe we could expand these into workshops or half-day events,” he said. “Software is great, but with such a humanistic challenge we’re trying to solve, software isn’t going to solve it altogether.”

Lombardino says the company has grown from an events business only to a platform for connecting people with “the tools and the inspiration to be a culture-shaper” within their teams.

“We want to be the company that gives them the practical tools and resources to make that happen,” he said.

CultureCon this year is hosting its inaugural AI Summit 2026 April 21-23, putting a spotlight on how the technology is impacting company culture and the workforce.

“If we want to use AI as an example, it’s like, a lot of these companies are navigating extremely fast-paced changes that are impacting all industries,” Lombardino said. “And so to successfully stay competitive and be productive and be innovative, you need a workforce that’s highly engaged.”

This year’s CultureCon 2026, part of the event series that began in 2017, is being held Aug. 4-6 at the Madison Concourse Hotel & Governor’s Club.

Listen to the podcast and see the full list of WisBusiness.com podcasts.

See more in a recap from last year’s CultureCon, and see details on this year’s event.

— European cheese makers claimed the top three spots in this year’s World Championship Cheese Contest in Madison, where judges selected cheeses from the Netherlands and Switzerland as winners.

The 2026 world champion cheese was the Beemster Royaal Grand Cru, made by CONO Kaasmakers in Westbeemster, Netherlands. Speaking over a video call from Holland, company spokesperson Gijs Dankers said “we’re very, very proud” to take the No. 1 spot in this year’s international competition.

“This special recipe, the Royaal Grand Cru, has been made in honor of the royal house,” he said. “It’s a special cheese which we developed … It’s a very sweet and nutty cheese, still very creamy because the curd is hand-stirred. So really an exceptional cheese.”

The No. 2 cheese was the Appenzeller Purple Label, made by Lucas Meier and Kaserei Kirchberg of SO Appenzeller Käse GmbH in Appenzell, Switzerland. And the No. 3 winner was the Alter Fritz cheese, made by Hardegger Käse AG in Jonschwil, Switzerland.

The awards for the two runners-up were accepted by representatives of a Swiss cheesemaking association called Fromarte.

The three awardees were selected through two days of technical evaluation by a team of 56 judges.

The World Championship Cheese Contest has been hosted biennially since 1957 by the Wisconsin Cheese Makers Association, which calls it the largest technical dairy products evaluation in the world. This year’s contest had 3,375 entries, including cheeses, butter, yogurt and other dairy products.

See the top 20 finalists here — which includes just two U.S. submissions from Vermont and Washington — and see more on the contest here.

— Plaintiffs in a multistate lawsuit against the Trump administration hope to block the federal government from imposing more tariffs, AG Josh Kaul said.

Kaul is among 22 attorneys general and the governors of Kentucky and Pennsylvania seeking an injunction against the administration’s latest round of tariffs.

President Donald Trump announced a new 10% levy on all imported goods last month after the Supreme Court struck down the global tariffs he imposed under a 1977 law.

He later said the new tariffs would be increased to 15%, the maximum amount allowed under a provision of the Trade Act of 1974.

“The sooner we can get an order in this case blocking these new tariffs, the less damage that will be done as a result,” Kaul said yesterday.

Plaintiffs in the case before the U.S. Court of International Trade argue the president’s tariffs overreach the bounds of that statute and violate constitutional separation of powers and the Administrative Procedure Act.

Kaul said he was hopeful that the recent Supreme Court ruling, as well as what he felt was a “strong argument” advanced by plaintiffs, would persuade a judge to issue a preliminary injunction blocking the new tariff scheme.

He cited the Federal Reserve Bank of New York’s analysis showing U.S. consumers and firms paid nearly 90% of the tariff cost in the first 8 months of 2025.

“A central issue for Americans today is affordability. There are a number of families that are concerned about the cost of living, that are worried about whether they will ever be able to afford a house,” Kaul said.

“Donald Trump has exacerbated this problem with the erratic tariffs he has imposed for over a year.”

The Court’s ruling on the last round of tariffs did not address the more than $130 billion in tariff revenue collected by the administration in the last year.

A federal judge on the Court of International Trade on Thursday ordered the administration to begin issuing refunds to companies that paid tariffs.

— A Waukesha-based medical equipment company will pay nearly $7 million in a settlement related to allegedly submitting false claims to federal health programs.

That’s according to an announcement yesterday from the office of Brad Schimel, U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Wisconsin. In a statement on the settlement, he said it imposes a “significant penalty” on Kinex Medical Company while making taxpayers whole.

“Medicare, TRICARE, and other federal programs only pay for medical equipment that patients actually need,” he said. “Kinex, however, induced patients to receive braces that neither the patients nor their doctors thought they needed, all in an effort to receive taxpayer money.”

The business, which sells and distributes knee, shoulder and hip braces, allegedly submitted false claims to these programs in addition to the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program, and the Office of Workers Compensation Programs of the Department of Labor, Schimel’s office said.

In addition to providing unneeded medical devices, the company allegedly convinced patients to accept them by waiving co-pays and offering other free equipment, the announcement notes.

Kinex has agreed to a “corporate integrity agreement” with the federal government as part of the settlement, along with paying $6,925,000 to resolve the allegations.

Schimel’s office notes the investigation leading to this outcome stemmed from a whistleblower complaint filed under the False Claims Act, so the whistleblower will get part of the settlement amount.

The company did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the settlement.

See the release.

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— UW-Stout is getting $19 million in federal funding to lead the Manufacturing Extension Partnership program in Wisconsin, which supports small to mid-sized manufacturers in the state.

The university yesterday announced the five-year funding of $3.8 million per year from the U.S. Department of Commerce’s National Institute of Standards and Technology MEP National Network. It will go toward efforts at the UW-Stout Manufacturing Outreach Center and the Wisconsin Manufacturing Extension Partnership in Madison.

These two entities have been getting funding through the Wisconsin Center for Manufacturing and Productivity over the past 10 years, but the WCMP’s board moved to shut down that organization at the end of last year, the release notes.

Under the new funding structure, the outreach center is the primary applicant and coordinating entity while the WMEP is a subrecipient and “key partner” in the business services program.

See more in the release.

A cheese from The Netherlands is named best in the world

Last day at Porta Bella, one of Madison’s oldest Italian restaurants

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