Photo by Greg Allen
As a kid, Cheryl Pawelski was obsessed with two things: playing sports and collecting records. The latter was laying the groundwork for a career she couldn’t envision at the time.
Pawelski, Comm ’89, an acclaimed record producer and cofounder of the label Omnivore Recordings, spends her days surrounded by music from decades past. Much of it is unreleased or buried in an artist’s archive; her job is to resurrect the most significant recordings and reissue them for modern audiences.
That work has won her four Grammys and eight nominations, most recently in 2026 for a collection of demo tracks by legendary songwriter Doc Pomus. She has reissued and uncovered music by legends of many genres: Miles Davis, Nina Simone, Wilco, Bette Midler and The Beach Boys, to name a few.
“There’s not a pathway to what I do,” Pawelski says. Growing up in Milwaukee, she didn’t have a specific goal in mind for her future career. “I just knew I had to do something with music, and it took a long time to get there.”
While she studied journalism at Marquette, the path started to click into place. Pawelski worked on broadcasts for MUTV, where she learned to combine different pieces of multimedia to create something new. That experience ignited her love of producing, which she took with her into a nearly 20-year career working for recording giants EMI-Capitol and Rhino Entertainment.
Now with her own label, she’s on a mission to keep historical recordings alive. “I would like to throw as much music as I can into the future so that it can be found,” she says.
From the fall 2026 issue of Marquette Magazine
This and other stories from the fall edition of Marquette Magazine are now available online. Print copies are available on campus at the Zilber Hall security desk, AMU Information Center and outside Zilber Hall 235.
