Ciresi Walburn Foundation

By 1994, the tobacco industry had spent decades defeating or outlasting smoking lawsuits without paying a dollar in damages. Lawyers Mike Ciresi ’68 and Roberta Walburn chose to confront the industry anyway.

They met in the early 1980s in the courtroom of U.S. District Judge Miles Lord. Walburn, a former newspaper reporter, was Lord’s law clerk; Ciresi represented hundreds of women injured by the Dalkon Shield intrauterine contraceptive device.

After her clerkship, Walburn joined Ciresi’s law firm and began a professional partnership with him that was grounded in a shared belief of working for the common good.

“It was really clear when we met in Judge Lord’s courtroom that we shared the same outlook on a lot of things,” Walburn said.

Representing the State of Minnesota and Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Minnesota, Ciresi and Walburn pursued a different strategy: Rather than bring claims from individual smokers or challenge cigarettes as a legal product, they focused on the industry’s conduct and sought proof in the companies’ own records.

Known as “discovery,” this process allows lawyers to obtain internal documents, memos, emails and more that ultimately shape a lawsuit.

Their relentless effort produced roughly 35 million pages of documents that tobacco companies kept hidden for more than 40 years about disease, addiction and marketing to young people. After nearly four years of litigation and a four-month trial, the case ended May 8, 1998, in a landmark settlement.

Ciresi is quick to say that backing from Minnesota Attorney General Skip Humphrey and Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Minnesota CEO Andy Czajkowski was crucial. They resisted intense pressure to accept a national settlement that would have cut short Minnesota’s document discovery.

“Skip and Andy stood like oak trees,” Ciresi said. The State of Minnesota and Blue Cross won $7 billion, compared to $4 billion offered in the national deal. Of consequence to all, the final settlement secured release of the tobacco industry’s secret documents and a ban on marketing their products to children.

Champions for Youth

Ciresi and Walburn were fighting against deception, unaccountable power and the exploitation of vulnerable people, especially youth. The philanthropic foundation that arose from the lawsuit would become a living expression of the people they were fighting for.

Legal fees from the tobacco litigation endowed the foundation that would later bear their names. From the start, children were central to its purpose.

“The more we learned, the more we started to focus on education,” Walburn said. “What’s a bigger way to change the world than through education?”

Eventually, the Ciresi Walburn Foundation reached into higher education — and the University of St. Thomas.

For Ciresi, it was a deeply personal connection. After four years as a St. Thomas Academy high school student, he spent four more formative years on the same campus at the College of St. Thomas, where he played linebacker. The values established by his family, like care for the common good, were “nurtured and expanded upon,” he said.

Walburn came to the university as Ciresi’s reluctant guest for St. Thomas-St. John’s football games -– the legendary, 118-year Tommie-Johnnie rivalry. It took time to become a football fan. As that developed, so did an appreciation for the St. Thomas mission. She credits the university for working with the foundation to continually strengthen the Ciresi Walburn scholarship program.

St. Thomas eventually became home to the Ciresi Walburn Leadership Fellows. Students in that program move through their undergraduate years together as a cohort. The scholarship is significant, but the fellowship is much more than tuition support. Fellows receive mentoring, professional and leadership development, internships and opportunities to serve others. All of it is blanketed by the expectation that they will use their uncommon opportunity for the common good.

What Ciresi sees in the Fellows program carries an echo of the encouragement their legal team received in the tobacco case. The university, Ciresi said, “surrounds the student with support” -- not to coddle, but to help each person develop as a whole person and stand on their own two feet.

In the spring of 2026, the first four-year cohort of Fellows graduated. Their achievement arrives as scholarships take center stage as the top fundraising priority of Be Brilliant. Be Bold. The Campaign for St. Thomas. Ciresi Walburn Fellows demonstrate what a thoughtfully designed scholarship can accomplish when financial support is joined by relationships, expectations and a sustained investment in the whole person.

“Just to look at these students and see their dreams and their promise,” said Walburn, “gives you more hope for what the world could be like.”