Spartan Profiles: Hal Widlansky

40 UNDER 40

            The ability to grow a business is a valued skill, especially when you have done so for the past decade.  Thus it was no surprise that Hal Widlansky, ’92, executive vice president of ACULIS, Inc., a global IT services firm in Salt Lake City, was named to the Utah Business magazine’s “40 Under 40.” 

            Before joining ACULIS, Hal achieved a nearly 300 percent revenue increase in his markets over three years while a global director at SonoSite, Seattle, the world leader in portable ultrasound technology.  SonoSite acquired SonoMetric, a company Hal headed, in 2004, and “we were able to integrate SonoMetric’s software into the SonoSite product,” he notes.  “We must have done something right, because both Siemens and GE have copied it.” 

            Born in Detroit, Hal was accepted by both MSU and the University of Michigan.  He chose MSU “because it was farther from home and a lot of my friends were there.”  Hal says he loved MSU and currently serves on the board of directors of the new alumni club of Utah.  “Tom Muth, former chairperson of telecommunication, was a great mentor,” he remembers.  “Also Bob Albers, who was then the faculty member in charge of running WKAR-TV.”

            After his graduation from MSU, Hal actually spent over two years in the College of Osteopathic Medicine before deciding he was not interested in practicing medicine.  He switched to telecommunication and completed the coursework for a master’s degree, but landed a series of entrepreneurial opportunities before he could finish his thesis.  “It turned out that I made a pretty good set of choices,” he says.  His entrepreneurial success in business was foreshadowed at MSU, where he re-founded the local chapter of Zeta Beta Tau fraternity in 1991 and became president of the Student Coalition for Israel during the Gulf War.  “We tried to find common ground with the Palestinian students,” he notes.  In addition, he was cast in five productions of the MSU Theater Dept.—including Hamlet.  As he puts it, “I have lots of great memories of MSU.”