When the idea of becoming the 22nd president of Marquette University (MU) was first raised to Fr. Robert Wild, SJ, he wasn’t sure if he would enjoy fundraising.

“Turns out, I did,” he says with a wink and a grin.

Under Fr. Wild’s leadership, Marquette entered one of the most consequential periods in its history. The university strengthened its academic profile and national reputation, grew enrollment, expanded its campus, and completed a record-setting campaign.

Father Wild says the accomplishment he’s most proud of is establishing Marquette’s Office of Mission and Ministry to more intentionally anchor the university’s Catholic, Jesuit character in daily life.

“My life has been full of surprises,” he says. “I’ve tried to embrace the unexpected as it arrives at my doorstep.”

Father Wild grew up in Chicago, shaped by Midwestern sensibilities and educated by the Jesuits at Saint Ignatius College Prep (SICP), who saw promise in him early. But there was no lightning-bolt moment for the future Fr. Wild. His decision to apply to the Society of Jesus came after sensible and thoughtful discernment. While traveling through Europe with his mother and sister, he learned of his acceptance.

In the 1960s, Fr. Wild earned a bachelor’s degree at Loyola University Chicago (LUC) and began teaching Latin, Greek and debate at the high school level. By 1970, he was at Harvard University pursuing a PhD in New Testament and Christian origins. There, he found himself among some of the brightest people he’d ever known, an experience that stretched him intellectually.

At that point, the life in front of him was clear: scholarship and teaching. That was the plan. His first stop was MU, where he taught theology. It wasn’t long before he was asked to leave teaching for a leadership position— superior of young Jesuits in formation. He had never done anything like that and wasn’t sure he’d be good at it.

But he said yes anyway. Turns out, he was a natural leader.

By the mid-1980s, Fr. Wild was named provincial of the Chicago Province, responsible for hundreds of Jesuits across several states. “I’ve always been an extrovert,” he says. “I loved interacting with my fellow Jesuits and supporting their work.”

In 1992, he was appointed president of the Weston Jesuit School of Theology, a graduate school in Massachusetts that prepares priests and lay leaders for the Church. This post was something new again. He was now leading an entire institution.

Weston would be a proving ground for his next chapter and the role of a lifetime, the MU presidency. His 15 years at the helm would draw on everything he had learned, and his term would become a study in discipline, determination and results.

For Fr. Wild, leadership has never been abstract. It is built in conversation and understanding, he says. “I have been humbled by various roles and responsibilities. I have learned you have to have good people around you. And you have to listen to them, because they can save you from your follies.”

These days, there is a noticeable calm in Fr. Wild. The anxiety that marked earlier chapters is gone, and he declares himself unafraid of the road ahead. “The Lord is good,” he says.

His legacy is simple, he says: “That I gave of myself to the work as best I could.”

Father Wild’s life has been shaped by openness. He has said “yes” again and again, and in doing so, the life he did not plan became the one he was meant to live.