Alumni Lee Vermeulen and Jill Kolesar built their marriage — and influential careers — at the School of Pharmacy

By Archer Parquette

Conference Room F6/133 at the UW Health University Hospital isn’t necessarily special — tables, chairs, the usual — but Lee Vermeulen (MS ’92) and Jill Kolesar (BS ’90) joke that the nondescript meeting room should be named after them.

In July of 1990, the couple met for the first time in that room for orientation. Vermeulen was a transplant from Buffalo, New York, where he received his bachelor’s in pharmacy — it was his first day as a resident at UW Health through the combined Health System Pharmacy Administration residency and master’s degree program with the University of Wisconsin–Madison School of Pharmacy. Kolesar, a recent School of Pharmacy graduate with her bachelor’s in pharmacy, was starting her first day as an intern at the hospital.

“I can still remember that morning,” Vermeulen says. “I was sitting at the end of the table and Jill was over on my left side. It was actually a really scary day. You’re about 20 days out from graduation and you’re suddenly expected to act like a pharmacist. I was scared out of my wits.”

“I can still remember that morning. […] It was actually a really scary day. You’re about 20 days out from graduation and you’re suddenly expected to act like a pharmacist.”
—Lee Vermeulen

“Well, I wasn’t scared out of my wits ­— I was really excited,” remembers Kolesar, who was a first-generation college student. “I actually remember being very excited about my outfit, a brown blouse with flowers on it. I still have it.”

Over three decades later, Vermeulen and Kolesar have now been married for 18 years, have five children between them, and are both influential leaders in pharmacy. Kolesar is the dean of the University of Iowa College of Pharmacy, and Vermeulen is the executive vice president and CEO of the American Association of Colleges of Pharmacy.

But in the ’90s, they were just young pharmacists building their careers.

From friends to spouses

“Jill’s way smarter than me, and I’ve known it since the day I met her,” Vermeulen says.

He remembers a get-together with Kolesar and a few other friends in his apartment.

“She told this story about how she had graduated high school and decided that she needed to go find herself, and so she worked at the Grand Canyon for a year. And I thought, ‘Oh my God, who does that? This person is amazing.’”

“I remember thinking he was way louder than me,” Kolesar says, and she was struck by his irreverent sense of humor. One time, she asked Vermeulen about the correct dose of colchicine to treat gout. “He was like ‘There is no recommended dose — you just titrate until they get diarrhea and go from there,’” she says, laughing.

Despite hitting it off as friends, the two didn’t end up together during their time as intern and resident. Kolesar went to Texas for her PharmD degree, residency, and fellowship in oncology, and Vermeulen went to Chicago for a fellowship. During that time, both on their separate tracks, they started their individual families. Vermeulen has two children, while Kolesar has three.

But in the mid-’90s, they both found their way back to Madison. Kolesar was appointed as an assistant professor at the School of Pharmacy, while Vermeulen became a founding director at UW Health’s Center for Drug Policy and a clinical professor of pharmacy at the School. While on campus, Kolesar also earned her master’s degree in epidemiology, which informs her oncology work.

Kolesar asked Vermeulen to contribute his hospital policy expertise for several of her research projects.

“I would call Lee because he could always get things done,” she says. “He was always happy to help; he always made decisions; he hit deadlines.”

They found that they worked well together — Kolesar calls them “natural partners.” Over about a decade at UW, they both found themselves single again, and their professional relationship turned personal.

“We started chit-chatting,” Kolesar says.

“And one thing led to another,” Vermeulen adds.

The two became a couple in 2005 and tied the knot one year later.

Influential leaders in pharmacy

Vermeulen and Kolesar stayed in Wisconsin another 10 years before Kolesar took a position leading the Translational Oncology program at Markey Cancer Center at the University of Kentucky, and Vermeulen joined the university’s health system.

On the side, the couple jointly wrote McGraw Hill’s Pharmacy Drug Cards flashcard series, which quizzes students on drug information. The cards are used in nearly every college of pharmacy in the nation and are currently in their seventh edition.

In 2022, Lucinda Maine, the former leader of the AACP, told Vermeulen that she was retiring and recommended he consider the position.

“I said, Lucinda, I’m not even a member of your organization, and she said, ‘Lee, just apply.’”

Lucinda was right — Vermeulen got the job leading the AACP, an organization that represents colleges of pharmacy across the nation, including the University of Iowa College of Pharmacy, where Kolesar started her new position as dean in July.

“She always thought she was my boss, but now it’s official,” Vermeulen says. His largest goal at the AACP is to encourage increased enrollment in colleges and schools of pharmacy to help stem the nationwide pharmacist shortage.  

Last year, Iowa had the second-highest cancer rate in the country, and Kolesar, who is also an editor of the influential textbook Pharmacotherapy Principles and Practice, hopes that she can use her new position at the school to ultimately help improve health outcomes across the state.

“I’ve had former students come up to me years later and say, ‘I learned about cancer screenings in your class, and when my patient had symptoms, I knew what to do.’ That’s what I’ve found most satisfying about my work, to have that kind of impact,” she says.

When asked about their accomplishments, Kolesar and Vermeulen ultimately turn the answer back to their five children.

“Everything we’ve done professionally pales in comparison to what we’ve accomplished helping to raise five truly remarkable people,” Vermeulen says. “That’s definitely our legacy.”