When Chad Munger graduated from Michigan State University with a B.A. in English, he had no idea what he wanted to do with his degree or career. But his willingness to take risks and to seek out and seize opportunities has propelled him to success as an entrepreneur and to becoming a transformative philanthropist. It also has led him to being chosen as the MSU College of Arts & Letters Spring 2025 Alumni Commencement Speaker.

“Everything I have ever done has come from recognizing an opportunity within whatever I was doing,” said Munger, who is the co-owner and CEO of Mammoth Distilling, a Northern Michigan-based craft distillery that he founded in 2013 with his wife, Tracy Hickman, and which now has six tasting rooms located throughout the state.

His work with Mammoth Distilling also has led him to uncover the forgotten history of rye in the state of Michigan, which was once the leading producer of rye in North America. And, in partnership with Michigan State University, Munger is helping resurrect and reestablish this historically important crop to the state, a journey that started with an old whiskey advertisement that has led to the U.S. Department of Agriculture seed bank in Idaho, an abandoned farm on South Manitou Island, and to a sunken ship at the bottom of Lake Huron.

But Mammoth Distilling is not the first successful business Munger has created. He also founded a software and consulting company based in Chicago. However, throughout his career, it’s not his job that brings him the greatest source of pride, but rather the jobs and opportunities he has created for other people so that they can “do something they think is good with their life.”

“Everything I have ever done has come from recognizing an opportunity within whatever I was doing.”

That drive to make a constructive impact has shaped his career and philanthropy. Munger and his wife, both proud Spartan alumni who each come from Spartan families, have given very generously to MSU to support the research being done here, in part, because MSU has always supported them.

Since graduating from MSU in 1988, Munger has called upon experts here for help when needed and even came back to campus for a course on distilling, which changed the trajectory of his career. He cites this support and his English degree as being his greatest assets. And, beneath the entrepreneurial pivots and professional reinventions throughout his career is an enduring belief in the power of relationships, opportunity, and purposeful work.

Building a First Business

After graduating from MSU with no real plan as to what he wanted to do next, Munger enrolled in graduate school at Duke University but left after one day because it wasn’t the right fit. He decided to move to Chicago, and the night he arrived in the Windy City, everything he owned was stolen from his car.

However, things started to look up when he began working as a research assistant at the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons. Five years later, he was promoted to Director of Research and Scientific Affairs.

“I had a pretty fast rise in that nonprofit organization, which I attribute a lot to my degree because it was 100 percent a communications and analysis job,” Munger said. “My English degree was my greatest asset when communicating effectively, especially with physicians, and that was critical.”

When sensing an opportunity to strike out independently, Munger left the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons and started his own company.

“I left because I saw there was an opportunity to make them a client,” he said. “They needed a commercial partner to do things where they had no expertise and to realize the full potential of the projects they were invested in.”

“My English degree was my greatest asset when communicating effectively, especially with physicians, and that was critical.”

Without any coding knowledge himself, Munger founded Data Harbor, a software and consultant company that built, at the dawn of the Internet age, web-based accreditation management software systems for large training hospitals all around the country.

“I didn’t have any idea what I was getting into,” he said, “but that was a very formative part of my life.”

Perhaps the biggest discovery from this period was the realization that he loved creating jobs that empowered others to grow their own careers.

“What was really rewarding wasn’t the software or the consulting — it was the people,” he said. “Seeing them grow and go on to build something of their own, knowing they had a start with us, that’s what mattered.”

Building Community, One Spirit at a Time

Munger carried that same desire to create jobs and to make a positive impact on the community when he sold Data Harbor in 2010 and moved to Northern Michigan where he began imagining the different types of businesses he could start.

“We wanted to be part of the community and starting a business was one way to do that,” he said. “We also wanted to create jobs because, if we were going to stay, we needed to contribute.”

After a chance encounter with a craft gin maker in Chicago, Munger set his sights on launching a distillery. With little industry knowledge, he turned to Michigan State University for help, relying on the university’s unique distilling program to gain foundational training.

“At that time, Michigan State had one of only two distilling programs in the country,” he said. “Without it, I don’t know where I would have looked next, and I don’t know if I would have gotten far enough along to be successful had Michigan State not been there initially, so it is a critical piece of what happened.”

“”We wanted to be part of the community and starting a business was one way to do that. We also wanted to create jobs because, if we were going to stay, we needed to contribute.”

Munger left the course with a still on order, with having made critical industry contacts, and with a renewed sense of purpose.

“Michigan State presented enough information and gave enough resources that I was confident I could be successful,” Munger said. “It wasn’t the whole answer, but it was plenty to make me feel like I could come back for more as I needed it.”

Since its founding, Mammoth Distilling has grown into a company that reflects Munger’s deeper values — creating local jobs, empowering his employees, and strengthening community ties.

Rosen Rye

Now Munger and Mammoth Distilling are looking to make an even bigger impact on the state of Michigan. In partnership with Michigan State University, Mammoth Distilling is leading the research and rebirth of a historically significant rye grain varietal that will help reestablish Michigan as a leading producer of rye.

The project began when whiskey maker Ari Sussman, one of Munger’s long-term industry collaborators, discovered an old advertisement for whiskey made from “Rosen rye, the purest rye on earth from South Manitou Island, Michigan.”

At that time, Munger and Sussman had never heard of Rosen rye, a long-lost strain of grain that was once grown not too far from Mammoth Distilling’s headquarters. Their research showed that Michigan was the largest producer of rye in North America in the early 1900s, and the variety being grown here on millions of acres was Rosen rye, which was first propagated at Michigan State University when Frank Spragg, a plant breeder at MSU, was given a sample of seeds from Russia by a former student, Joseph Rosen. Spragg named the rye after Rosen and planted the first crops in Michigan in 1912.

However, it was later discovered that Rosen rye easily cross-pollinates, which reduces the quality of the crop. To remain pure, it needed to be isolated, and South Manitou Island, a remote 8-square-mile island located in Lake Michigan about 17 miles west of Leland, was chosen as the perfect location. It flourished there until about 1950 when the demand for rye declined, the South Manitou farms were abandoned, and Rosen rye became nearly extinct. South Manitou Island is now owned by the National Park Service.

Upon learning of the history of Rosen rye and its importance to the state of Michigan, Munger set out to find if any seeds still existed, a quest that led him to the U.S. Department of Agriculture seed bank in Idaho, which, as it turns out, got their Rosen rye seeds from Michigan State University.

“We didn’t know how deeply tied MSU was to Rosen rye when we started,” Munger said. “Now we’re talking about establishing a permanent seed farm on campus. It’s come full circle.”

Reconnecting the university to a forgotten chapter of its own agricultural legacy, Mammoth Distilling partnered with MSU to revive this historically important rye grain varietal from extinction, starting with just 18 grams of seed. And after being granted a special use permit form the National Park Service to farm on South Manitou Island, Rosen rye was once again being grown on the original farms.

“It’s been a huge success, bigger than anybody would have hoped for,” Munger said. “When we took those farms over, they hadn’t been used to grow crops in years and there was a mat of poison ivy about seven and a half inches thick over 16 acres that we dug up. In a couple years, we went from a half-acre planted by hand to all 16 acres planted as seed farms again.”

But the story doesn’t end there.

“Unfortunately, changes in the federal work force and operations at Sleeping Bear National Lakeshore mean that our special use permit on South Manitou Island will not be renewed and we must relocate our operation,” Munger said. “We are now figuring out where we want to go from here. It doesn’t have to be grown on an island if you’re a responsible grower, like Michigan State. To maintain the genetic purity of the crop, you can grow it in a greenhouse, and you can also plant it in places where there is nothing being grown nearby that will cross pollinate with it.”

Today, due to the efforts made by Mammoth Distilling and Michigan State University, there are nearly 1,000 acres of Rosen rye growing elsewhere in the state of Michigan.

“So, we’ve managed to take 18 grams of seed that I got from the USDA in 2020 and turned it into well over 300,000 pounds of seed. It’s been a huge success story,” Munger said. “My hope now is to bring the farm to Michigan State. I would like to start a seed farm under Michigan State’s control, which we can help fund and operate, and we can keep the crop commercially viable that way.”

Bentley Rye

This pursuit to reestablish Michigan as a leading producer of rye also has led Mammoth Distilling and Michigan State University to a sunken ship at the bottom of Lake Huron, the James R. Bentley, which was loaded with a large shipment of rye when it sunk in November 1878 just north of Rogers City, Michigan. All crew members were rescued, but the rye was not.

In September 2024, in collaboration with Mammoth Distilling and Michigan State University, two divers swam 160-feet below the surface to the Bentley in 39-degree water and extracted a substantial quantity of seeds, which were immediately placed in tubes and put on ice. Munger then drove the seeds to MSU to the lab of Eric Olson, Ph.D., Associate Professor in the College of Agriculture and Natural Resources and expert in wheat breeding and genetics.

The Bentley seeds are much older than the Rosen seeds and come from an agricultural era without much mechanization. However, the Bentley seeds would not germinate, due to the extensive time in the water.

Olson and his team are now planning to extract DNA from the seeds to create a new variety of rye for the distilling industry, something that would be impactful to the entire state.

For more information on the Bentley project, see the MSU Today article, “How MSU is bringing shipwrecked seeds back to life.”

Philanthropy as a Way of Life

Both Chad and Tracy come from families with strong histories of philanthropy and community engagement and ongoing support for MSU. That sense of making a positive impact to help others, carries into Chad and Tracy’s philanthropy, which focuses on investing in long-term, transformative work. The $1.5 million Dewey Memorial Endowed Scholarship to support dual degree DVM/Ph.D. students in Michigan State’s College of Veterinary Medicine was the first opportunity they had to give to and engage with MSU on a level that will have a lasting impact.

Subsequently, Tracy’s family, through The Stephen L. Hickman Family Foundation, made a substantial gift funding cancer research and treatment at Michigan State University. It supports MSU’s interdisciplinary “One Health” approach, which unites research across human and animal health, environmental science, and medical technology.

That gift created a $3 million expendable fund that is fueling research initiatives to advance the standard of care in veterinary and human medicine, including a clinical innovations program in the College of Veterinary Medicine.  

Another $3 million established the Hickman Family Endowed Chair in Oncology with the goal of developing diagnostic and therapeutic tools to fight cancer in people and animals. 

“We believe in supporting academic research, and MSU is uniquely positioned with a vet school, two med schools, a nursing school, and the FRIB — it’s all there,” Munger said. “We believe in what they’re building.”

“Giving has unintended consequences, touches more people and more programs than you could ever really imagine, and is far more rewarding than you would ever think it could be. You get far more out of it than you could ever put into it.”

Chad’s parents, Ben and Bette Munger, who both graduated from MSU, Ben with a Ph.D. and Bette with a master’s degree, both degrees from MSU’s College of Education, also have a history of giving back to the university. They are members of the John Hannah Society and annually give to MSU’s College of Education.

Chad and Tracy now serve on the campaign committee for MSU’s $4 billion comprehensive fundraising campaign and are working to grow alumni engagement.

“When you help somewhere, you help everywhere,” Munger said. “Giving has unintended consequences, touches more people and more programs than you could ever really imagine, and is far more rewarding than you would ever think it could be. You get far more out of it than you could ever put into it.”

A Spartan for Life

Throughout his life, MSU has remained a consistent and evolving presence in Munger’s journey. He has returned to MSU not just as an alum, but as a collaborator and partner, from whiskey distilling to agricultural projects to cancer research and veterinary care.

“Over and over again, I’ve come back to Michigan State because with almost anything I’ve decided to do, there’s somebody at MSU who can help me do it,” he said. “My life is a much better place because of the relationships I have with people at Michigan State. It’s really changed my life.”

Munger will return to Michigan State University’s campus this week to deliver the Spring 2025 commencement address at the College of Arts & Letters ceremony on Sunday, May 4, at 8:30 a.m. at the Breslin Student Events Center.

“Over and over again, I’ve come back to Michigan State because with almost anything I’ve decided to do, there’s somebody at MSU who can help me do it.”

As he prepares to deliver his commencement address, he hopes to leave students with a message that encourages them to see MSU not as a chapter that closes at graduation but as a lifelong partner.

“The liberal arts education has real value, and the place they got it from is far more valuable to them over the course of their life if they stay engaged and they give back,” Munger said. “Michigan State is full of resources and people that they should stay connected to. It’s personally and professionally beneficial, and it’s always a good first place to go as a resource no matter what it is. If they don’t have it, MSU can help you find it. Your education formally might stop when you graduate, but MSU is a resource forever.”

By Austin Curtis and Kim Popiolek