• Shawn Eichorst will begin as Wisconsin’s new athletic director with a $1.6 million annual salary.
• His contract also includes annual increases and incentives, though specific details are not yet public.
• Eichorst’s starting salary is higher than predecessor Chris McIntosh’s 2025-26 salary.

MADISON – Shawn Eichorst will start as Wisconsin’s athletic director with a higher annual salary than his predecessor.

Eichorst will make an annual salary of $1.6 million along with built-in annual increases and incentives, a university spokesman told the Journal Sentinel.

That is above Chris McIntosh’s $1.5 million annual salary for the 2025-26 academic year. (That consisted of $1 million from the university and $500,000 from the UW Foundation.) McIntosh’s salary was set to increase by $50,000 for each year of his contract, which would have gone through June 30, 2029.

It also is well above Marcus Sedberry’s $875,000 annual salary for the nearly three months when he was interim AD. Sedberry’s salary is set to return to $334,805 “plus any intervening pay adjustments,” according to the offer letter from April.

An open records request from the Journal Sentinel for Eichorst’s contract, which will include more details about the increases and incentives, is pending.

Eichorst previously served as the deputy AD and chief operating officer at Texas for the last eight years. He also was Miami’s AD in 2011-12 and Nebraska’s AD from 2012-17. Before Miami, the Lone Rock native spent five years working with the Badgers under Barry Alvarez.

A missing Wisconsin teen was found safe after mysteriously vanishing from home four years ago as her family had believed she was “lured away.”

Joniah Walker, 19, was safely discovered on May 25, the Milwaukee Police Department told WISN on Tuesday.

Police officials didn’t disclose where Walker was found or provide any further information on the case, including whether the teen was with someone else.

Walker, then 15, had disappeared from her Milwaukee home on June 23, 2022.

Walker’s mother, Tanesha Howard, said she last saw her daughter lying in bed when she left for work the morning of her disappearance, according to the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children.

“Joniah was lying in bed because she had just finished school. I went in to give her a hug before leaving for work,” Howard told the organization.

The mother and daughter duo had talked on the phone several times throughout the day before Walker “suddenly stopped responding.”

Walker was supposed to meet her father to apply for a summer work permit but failed to arrive at the designated time.

“He called me and said that Joniah wasn’t picking up her phone,” Howard said. “That is when I immediately knew something was wrong. I left work right away.” 

A nearby ring camera captured Walker leaving the apartment complex at around 2:30 p.m. in the Brewer’s Hill neighborhood, a mile-and-a-half north of Downtown Milwaukee.

Video footage showed the teen carrying a large green backpack.

It was the last known sighting of Walker until she was reportedly found last month.

Howard believed her daughter had met someone online after she deleted her digital footprint and never returned.

“Somebody stole her…that was my first instinct,” Howard said. “But when I saw that she left with a big backpack that I had never seen, that’s when I knew. I was like, someone lured her away.” 

The protective mother issued multiple pleas for her daughter to come home, begging Walker to “call me,” WISN reported in July 2022.

“She is my youngest daughter, so I always call her by ‘baby girl’ because that is exactly who she is, my baby girl,” she said. “She is what I would describe as a perfect daughter. She is angelic, soft spoken and very intelligent.”

Walker was one of the faces of a legislative push by Wisconsin State Rep. Shelia Stubbs (D-Madison) seeking to pass a bill to create a Missing and Murdered African American Women and Girls Task Force, according to Fox6 Now.

Stubbs says she believed Walker was still alive, telling Howard to hold out hope for her daughter’s return.

“I believed Joniah was still living, and I said that to her – I don’t believe Joniah is dead, it’s only a matter of time,” Stubbs told the outlet.

“I think right now, the family needs their privacy,” Stubbs added. “I know there are so many questions, but I think as time goes by when they are ready to tell their story, they will tell it.”