FRI AM News: WisBusiness: the Podcast with Lina Song, Doogooda; Construction job growth a ‘bright spot’ for metro Milwaukee, report shows

May 8, 2026

— This week’s episode of “WisBusiness: the Podcast” is with Lina Song, founder of the Madison-based startup Doogooda.

The company, which originally hails from South Korea, builds “decision infrastructure” for hospitals, with a focus on academic medical centers.

“The problem that we are trying to solve is that hospitals usually make like dozens of really, really high-stakes decisions, multi-million dollar decisions every year or every month,” Song said. “These could be something like whether to acquire struggling community hospitals or physician practices or like whether to expand a service line or cut it, or how to allocate capital across competing different priorities.”

She says most hospitals don’t have a formalized record of how and why decisions like these are made, despite being data-driven organizations. Song noted hospitals typically “want to make sure their decisions are rigorous” and analytically supported, and her platform aims to support that.

The company is currently raising its U.S. seed round and developing relationships with Wisconsin health systems; Song notes a “deep dive” with UW Health is in the works. While she’s targeting academic centers, the platform can also be used by smaller critical access hospitals and rural care facilities.

Song, who has a PhD from Harvard, spent a decade deploying the platform at various institutions abroad before recently launching domestically through gener8tor’s gBETA program. She previously taught in London as a professor at University College London, focusing on the U.S. healthcare system and data science statistics.

While her business had “some traction” in South Korea, she views it as a much better fit for the U.S. medical system, noting it’s more complex and needs more decisionmaking support.

Song says she’s glad to have landed in Madison in recent months, calling it a “perfect market” for Doogooda given its developed ecosystem around health care and available pool of skilled talent.

“We would like to raise funds in Madison,” she said. “We recently got connected to various angel investors as well as some health care VCs and other VCs from Wisconsin, so gener8tor has been very helpful.”

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

— A new MMAC report highlights Milwaukee’s growing construction industry as a source of strength for the region, though housing affordability poses a concern.

The Metropolitan Milwaukee Association of Commerce yesterday issued the report from Marquette University’s Center for Applied Economics. It shows the Milwaukee metro area added about 3,400 construction jobs between January 2025 and January 2026, for an increase of 9.6%.

Authors say that’s the largest increase by percentage and in absolute terms for any major sector, noting it “may suggest continued demand for contractors, building materials, equipment suppliers, and related professional services.”

But overall job growth for the region and state overall have been “softer,” the report shows. Year-over-year non-farm payroll growth in January was 0.2% at the national level, compared to -0.8% for the Milwaukee metro area and -0.6% for Wisconsin.

Milwaukee’s construction industry job growth aligns with the state-level trend, as Wisconsin added about 10,100 construction jobs over the year ending in January for an increase of 7.7%. At the same time, total non-farm employment for the state in January had fallen by 17,200 over the year, driven by declines in retail and manufacturing.

In Milwaukee, the metro area lost about 6,400 total non-farm jobs over the year ending in January, and retail and manufacturing were “weak spots” for the local labor force.

Meanwhile, authors wrote that “housing affordability may become a growing concern” as local price increases are outpacing the national average.

Over a six-month period from October 2025 to March 2026, the state’s average monthly median listing price rose by 0.92% to $378,466. The Milwaukee metro area saw growth of 2.3% over the same period one year earlier, reaching $377,293. At the national level, the average monthly median listing price was $409,658, falling 0.95% over the same period.

While rising home values “strengthen the balance sheets of existing homeowners” and show demand is healthy in the region, authors say this rate of price growth poses a potential issue for employers.

“As housing costs climb, affordability for lower-income workers and prospective new hires tightens,” they wrote. “Watching this trade-off alongside wage growth will be an important consideration in the coming months.”

See the report.

— Meta’s Beaver Dam data center will be required to pay for new power plants built in Alliant Energy’s service area after the project comes online.

Members of the Public Service Commission yesterday voted to impose an “incremental cost adjustment charge” to the data center’s power bill that would account for new generation that would not have otherwise been needed if not for the data center.

Commissioner Kristy Nieto said regulators wanted to know “what the actual costs to serve the customer are and what the actual revenues are and to make sure other customers are not paying, and this provided us with a clear option to do that.”

Regulators approved a modified version of the service contract between the data center and the utility at a hearing tyesterday.

The data center is expected to demand up to 220 megawatts of power capacity at full operation.

Alliant has said it has the excess generating capacity to meet the data center’s power needs. But intervenors like the Citizens Utility Board had argued approving a contract that did not account for possible new generation would unfairly shift those costs to other ratepayers.

“As noted by the Public Service Commission of Wisconsin, the relationship between utilities and the data centers they power impacts us all. And we agree that it should be easy for us to make sure they are paying for their own energy and infrastructure,” RENEW Wisconsin Communications Director Alex Beld said in a statement.

Regulators also approved stronger financial penalties if the data center terminates service early and added language naming Meta as the data center’s guarantor.

But the commission declined to require Meta to post collateral to meet any outstanding costs if the data center were to shutter, or set a minimum credit limit required to exempt the tech giant from future collateral requirements.

It also signed off on the 10-year contract proposed by the utility instead of a 10- or 15-year contract length proposed by CUB and other intervenors.

Commissioner Marcus Hawkins reasoned that the application demonstrated the data center would be able to pay back Alliant’s share of new public infrastructure being built for it – some $191 million in new transmission.

He noted, though, that ratepayers outside of Alliant’s service area would also share those transmission costs. Commissioners encouraged the utility to work with transmission utility American Transmission Company to amend the federal rules dictating transmission costs.

We Energies has said it’s working with ATC on a filing to change that rule with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.

Alliant said in a statement that it “appreciates” the PSC’s review and approval of the Meta contract.

“Protecting our customers while allowing communities to grow is central to our commitment at Alliant Energy, and that’s exactly what this contract is designed to do,” the company said in a statement.

Looking ahead, the commissioners ordered Alliant to create and submit standardized contract terms – a tariff – for future large-load customers with power demand of 100 megawatts or greater.

Two weeks ago, commissioners ruled on a “Very Large Customer” tariff setting the terms by which We Energies and parent WEC Energy Group would bill data centers in its coverage area – in that case, Microsoft’s data center campus in Mount Pleasant and Vantage’s facilities in Port Washington.

The tariff that Alliant will submit will serve much of the same purpose for future data centers built in the utility’s largely rural service area. Nieto counted 12 other data centers in the works in Alliant’s service area.

“This is not going to be the last data center contract we see from this utility, and, I will say, Alliant needs standard guidelines and rules for its data center customers,” Nieto said.

Power Wisconsin Forward, a coalition of clean energy advocates that includes RENEW, said in a statement it would have preferred to see Alliant’s contract rejected, but supported requiring the utility to submit a tariff and the changes the PSC made to the Meta contract.

— Milwaukee-area Dems warned Medicaid cuts will harm residents across Wisconsin, as the state is projected to receive $7 billion less in funding from the federal health program over the next decade.

That figure is from a new report by Protect Our Care, which organized yesterday’s webinar with U.S. Rep. Gwen Moore and state Rep. Deb Andraca, as well as other advocates. It shows Wisconsin faces an 8% baseline 10-year Medicaid funding cut, with a projected increase of 54,000 uninsured people by 2034.

Moore, D-Milwaukee, who represents the state’s 4th CD, noted Medicaid serves as “the health care of last resort” for many people in the state, including middle-class families with children who have special needs.

“We have seen Medicaid be the cornerstone for small business owners who cannot afford to have health care otherwise,” she said. “It’s, again, the largest payer for mental health, which is so often ignored until there are crises that descend upon the entire community.”

Her concerns were echoed by Andraca, D-Whitefish Bay, who noted Medicaid covers one out of every three children in Wisconsin and one out of three working-age adults with disabilities in the state.

“Let’s be clear, these cuts are going to hurt people we know … more than 34,000 Wisconsinites have already lost coverage after Donald Trump and the Republicans in Congress made these cuts,” she said.

Meanwhile, Moore argued everyone should be concerned about the impact of Medicaid funds, not just those who are covered by the program.

“It also means that your premium is going to go up, whether that’s negotiated through your labor union, or whether that’s through a private corporation, you’re going to see HR sending that email to you very soon, sliding it into your inbox, of what your premium increases will be,” she said.

In response to Moore blaming Republicans for having “gutted” healthcare to pay for tax cuts for billionaires, GOP U.S. Rep. Tony Wied said “no amount of spin from Congresswoman Moore can change the fact that she voted for the single largest tax increase on working families in American history and opposes the majority of Wisconsinites who support reasonable work requirements for taxpayer-funded welfare.”

For more of the most relevant health care news, reports on groundbreaking research in Wisconsin, links to top stories and more, sign up today for the free daily Health Care Report from WisPolitics and WisBusiness.com.

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— Industry groups and local government organizations have launched a new public website detailing the condition of about 17,000 small bridges and culverts in Wisconsin.

The Transportation Development Association of Wisconsin yesterday announced the launch of FixWIBridges.com. The announcement notes the small-scale infrastructure captured in the site, spanning 6 to 20 feet, aren’t included in federal or state tracking systems.

TDA Executive Director Debby Jackson says “we have long known” these structures were aging but notes you can’t fix what you can’t measure.

“This website takes years of data and puts it directly into the hands of the taxpayers and leaders,” she said in a statement. “It provides another reason why Wisconsin requires a clear roadmap to fund our most urgent needs and prioritize future investments.”

An inventory effort by state and local agencies funded with $12.5 million from the 2023-25 state budget found more than 1,600 of the small structures are in “poor or severe” condition. Some require “immediate” weight restrictions, lane limitations or closures while others may need to be replaced entirely in the near future, the TDA says.

Partners in the website project include the Wisconsin Towns Association, Wisconsin Counties Association, League of Wisconsin Municipalities, Wisconsin County Highway Association, Wisconsin Farm Bureau Federation and the TDA.

See the release.

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