Spotlight on Badger Alumni: Entrepreneurs & Mechanical Engineers Brian & Heidi Dondlinger

Husband-and-Wife Entrepreneurs and Mechanical Engineering alumni Brian (MSME’10; BSME’98) and Heidi Dondlinger (BSME’00) are the founders of Orion Motors, a Milwaukee-based startup that is turning the RV industry, specifically the camper van segment, on its proverbial head. Their entrepreneurial journey – and even some of their innovative thinking – began right here in Madison. The Dondlingers now live in the Milwaukee area with their two young children.

Tell us about your time on campus!

Heidi: We loved our time in Madison. It helped solidify our passion for creating and building. Brian always knew he was destined to build machines, and engineering was an easy choice for him, though not always an easy road. I came to engineering on a suggestion from a high-school physics teacher, and things didn’t really click for me until I got involved with FutureCar and the student chapters of ASME and BMES. Brian was on the SAE Mini-Baja and FSAE Formula Car teams, and also part of ASME, which is where we met. I guess you could call it geek love.

Glenn Bower remembers you both from your involvement with the hybrid and Baja teams What can you share with us about your extracurriculars?

Brian: We had such great garage and travel conversations with Glenn over the years. I held several roles in Baja, including chassis lead and co-captain, and rowed with the Badgers for four years. Heidi led the weight and aerodrag reduction group with FutureCar, was President of the BMES society, and played several intramural sports. Both Heidi and I held various positions, including officers in ASME. Heidi served as Industrial Relations chair, and I was President my senior year.

Heidi: Beyond extracurriculars, we both also had jobs with the school as undergrads: Brian worked in the experimental wing of the Engine Research Center, which was a great way to get involved in top-level research. I was a teaching assistant for Computer-Aided Design and an all-women’s section of an Introduction to Engineering course.

We stayed involved after college, too: Brian helped organize the Midwest Mini-Baja races, and has also been a design judge for both SAE Mini-Baja and SAE Formula student competitions. After he received his Master’s of Engineering in Engine Systems degree, Brian co-wrote Vehicular Engine Design, the second edition of a textbook with one of his instructors.

Brian: Though a few years have gone by, it’s great when we can catch Glenn occasionally at events. He was (and I’m sure still is) a driving force behind both the availability and quality of the college experiences we had. The variety and availability of the hands-on opportunities we had at Madison definitely shaped our futures as we were able to gain experience and learn quickly.

What can you share with us about your career paths?

Heidi: One thing we really took advantage of at Madison was the intern and co-op programs, which were key to our later career decisions. One of Brian’s internships, at S&S Cycle, validated his desire to go into motorcycle design and development. I had several, including an international internship in Ankara, Turkey, which led me to pursue an advanced Biomedical Engineering degree.

Brian: Post-college, I landed a job with Harley-Davidson in their engineering rotation program, which gave me experience in manufacturing, design, and production supervision. While working on my Master’s, I worked in powertrain design on several Big Twin programs. After that, several roles around the business helped me understand the vehicle business end to end: chassis design, system integration, rider interface, project management… I even had a critical role in managing big IT implementations of new lifecycle management and enterprise planning software systems.

Heidi: I won a fellowship after undergrad that allowed me to transition right to my Master’s degree in Biomedical Engineering in Milwaukee, where Brian was working. My research leveraged fractal principles found in nature to be able to model blood flow in the lung. After graduation, I went to GE Healthcare for a two-year stint, then pivoted to product development consulting with Brooks Stevens Design. Working with entrepreneur clients and large corporations, I learned that I loved working with clients, and I got a front row seat to the benefits and challenges of running a business. To grow my responsibilities, I returned to GEHC in 2010 to manage both programs and people, then returned to product design after some behind-the-scenes work in IT and operations. I currently lead product management for a portfolio of digital solutions that help healthcare providers maximize efficiency and quality of their clinical fleet.

Brian: You may be hearing a couple of themes here: Invention and entrepreneurship. Starting our own business was always in the back of our minds, and COVID provided the opportunity to do it. In order to safely travel in 2020, we built our first camper van to get outside with our two kids and our dogs. When we stepped back and questioned everything about the experience, we ended up building something we had never seen before. With some soul searching and support from family and friends, we took the plunge four years ago and founded Orion Motors. Soon after, I left Harley to lead the effort full-time. We continue to grow the business and completed our 50^th build in early 2025.

What are some of the experiences throughout your careers that have been most interesting to you? What are you most proud of so far?

Brian: We love projects where there is a big problem to solve. The work can be intense, but you get to see big benefits. For me, bringing full stability control to the touring bikes at Harley was a powerful moment. My work helped deliver rider confidence while making motorcycle riding safer and more fun. Both of us are also proud of the big IT projects we worked on as they help modernize processes, eliminate waste, and help people. Now at Orion, it’s exciting to see how our customers actually live differently – and tell better stories – because of our work. 

Heidi: We are deliberate and thoughtful in our approach though. We don’t just create solutions that make every aspect automatic – we don’t want to separate our owners from those tactile and tangible experiences of camping that provide simple joys and real human connections. I think more and more, we will all be searching for these types of little, real-world analog experiences in our increasingly digital world.

Please discuss how UW shaped you into the person and engineer you are today.

Brian: College provided many challenges and opportunities to create and work hard. Sometimes we succeeded. Sometimes we failed, but we always had fun doing it and learning. One of the terrific things about being a Badger is how many things are happening and how many potential friends you can make outside your major – in the dorms, at Badger football games, and everything else.  We still keep in contact with several of our classmates.

Heidi: I came from a small high school and loved the energy in Madison, the size of the campus, the excellence of the departments. Each year, I added arts courses, including glassblowing, neon, dance, and choir – just for my own enjoyment, and I continue to practice several of them.  “Work hard, play hard” was really our motto then and continues today.

Anything else you’d like to share!

Heidi:  I’m just so grateful for the diversity of experiences and the quality of friendships we developed while at Madison. We feel we maximized our time there – and had a blast.  We’ll always be a Badger family.

Brian:  It’s also fun to be doing all this as a husband-and-wife team – Heidi and I can switch between dinner plans to steel fabrication details – and back – in the same breath.  We are comfortable challenging each other and are quick to support.

Heidi: There are a couple of things we learned about our partnership in life and work: always have a ‘lead’ on each project who owns the final decision, and be sure to celebrate accomplishments before jumping to the next problem.

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