Engineering Comedy: Don McMillan ’81

Don McMillan '81 was 12 years old, leaning out the window of his house and talking to his neighbor. McMillan was making the neighbor laugh so hard that milk came out of his nose.

Why was the neighbor outside with a glass of milk? Who knows. Same for what McMillan said.

But it’s his first memory of being funny.

Funny was a special skill in the McMillan household.

His father was a quiet, focused man who worked as a mechanical engineer, securing several patents in lift-truck design. His mother was a straight-A student who attended the University of Pennsylvania on a full scholarship, where she earned a degree in chemistry. Needless to say, it was a serious home.

Future forecasting would illustrate the power of that left brain, with two sisters becoming certified public accountants and one a medical lab technician. McMillan earned his degree at Lehigh in electrical engineering, taking graduate-level courses by his senior year, and then went on to Bell Laboratories and Stanford University.

But somehow, that stream of milk — and the laughter that caused it — stayed with him.

Today, McMillan is making folks laugh as a full-time, house-filling, scene-stealing, and comedy-winning icon. His corporate events, comedy tour, and hometown gigs fill his days with life-affirming chortles, snorts, and dairy geysers.

Lehigh Claims to Fame

McMillan came to Lehigh from Cherry Hill, New Jersey. In high school, he was a talker, getting into trouble for funny asides to the guys around him.

It prompted his physics teacher to write in his yearbook: “To the nicest student I ever had to tell to shut up.”

The size of his high school was equivalent to the South Mountain campus, so he felt right at home. He settled into a study room in M+M until he found a permanent room on the first floor. His Gryphon took good care of him and eased his nerves as a frosh. 

While he never pledged, he made good friends, played sports, and maintained an active social life. Intramurals became a focus, which is where he earned his claims to fame.

As a junior, his basketball squad, thanks to Mike Bak ’81, upset Theta Delta Chi in the championship game — the team that had won it for nearly two decades. It was the headline in The Brown & White the next day! His streak continued as a senior when he won the foul-shooting contest, making 25 in a row to claim the title.

But, as learned at home, he was a serious student, balancing his class load with work study jobs, like security, study hall monitor, and teaching assistant.

His hard work paid off with a role at Bell Laboratories that included a year at Stanford University to earn a master’s degree.

That was a great year. Life in California. Fun weekends after a grueling week of work. McMillan found Stanford no harder than Lehigh, so he thrived. He eventually returned to Bell Labs and worked for three years, but he missed the West Coast.

So he went back to California, working as an integrated chip designer. He managed a team at a San Jose design center for seven years. But he wasn’t fulfilled.

McMillan Finds a Mic and Spotlight

The mid-1980s saw a comedy boom up and down the West Coast. Johnny Carson was king of late night, and clubs flourished.

McMillan was 17 years old when he saw his first comedy show. A buddy who wrote the comedy column in his school newspaper invited him to an open mic event. That friend took the stage while McMillan sat captivated.

As an engineer, McMillan took the engineer’s approach to comedy. He first took an acting class and soon thereafter was cast in a role. He then took an improv class and soon thereafter joined a troupe. After a year, the troupe leader surprised McMillan by lining up a five-minute stand-up set at an open mic.

“‘Get your material ready,’ is what he said to me. So I did,” says McMillan.

He killed it and has the audio tape to prove it.

He was hooked.

He hit open mics anywhere he could, testing material in five- and ten-minute sets. He met other comics and developed relationships.

Once he developed 15 minutes of solid material, he began opening shows. After a year, a friend offered him a weekend headliner set at a club, Rooster T. Feathers, where he still performs (and where a Lehigh regional club sees him!).

So engineering by day and stand-up by night. That lasted five years. He was ready to make the leap to full-time comedy, but he needed a sign to trust it would work.

Two Signs to Go All In On Comedy

In one week, those signs came. He won the San Francisco International Comedy Competition (beating fifth place winner Louis CK) and then was booked in a national advertisement for United Airlines. That’s all it took. He quit engineering, although it never quit him.

His current tour is called "Don McMillan 2.0 Powered by AI."

AI has helped him with the speed at which he can write jokes. 

“AI provides immediate research,” he says. “It might understand the joke formula, but it doesn’t know funny.”

As an engineer, he describes jokes as A + B ≠ C.

“Jokes are linear until the unexpected twist at the end,” he says. “I often had to figure out why an integrated circuit chip would do something unexpected, so thinking off a literal path comes naturally to me.”

Seems he is good at debugging humor. That’s why he uses PowerPoint. Not much could be nerdier. Or funnier. It has become a niche for him — although he is still waiting for a Microsoft sponsorship (hint, hint).

In 1993, he won $100,000 as the Star Search Grand Champion. That prompted a move to Los Angeles, where he then appeared in television and films, including Air Bud 3.

“I see myself as the hero of that picture because I saved the puppies,” he says.

He earned national recognition through a recurring role as a delivery driver in a Budweiser commercial and has been featured in Entertainment Weekly and TV Guide.

Those claims to fame help increase his corporate bookings to craft and tell jokes to large corporate audiences. Those trips helped him have a life at home with his spouse and son.

While his kid will quietly admit that his father is low-key funny, his wife laughs every time they talk on the phone following a corporate show. She asks “how it went,” to which he replies, “Fooled them again.”

He’s fooling no one. In 2022, he made the finals at America’s Got Talent. That deep run has kept him on the road with steady tour dates.

But will he play his Lehigh Reunion? No. Despite being asked.

“I don’t want to steal the spotlight there,” he says. “That event is about all my friends, not for me to perform.”

He wants to laugh with everyone instead — so his classmates can feel what he feels: the joy, power, and gift of shared laughter.