Three to Receive UW Distinguished Alumni Awards

Sept. 30, 2004 -- Three University of Wyoming graduates who became leaders in their respective fields will be honored with Distinguished Alumni Awards during UW Homecoming Oct. 8-9. They are entrepreneur Hal Krause, who attended high school in Upton and Douglas; geologist and mining company president Tom Thorson of Casper; and business leader Sol Trujillo, a Cheyenne native.

They will attend several Homecoming activities, will ride in the parade that starts at 9:30 a.m. Saturday, Oct. 9, and will be recognized during the football game with San Diego State at 1 p.m.

Krause (B.A. '62) is a natural-born entrepreneur, who learned early on that communication skills are the key to anyone's success.

He came to UW as an American studies major and pledged Alpha Tau Omega. When he experienced financial difficulty, he became a part-time salesman. In 1962, Krause's sales of pots and pans paid off, earning him a UW degree and $35,000 for the year.

Krause began law school at George Washington University, but left to start his own company, American Salesmasters. The organization held seminars for business people and featured motivational speakers. Financial success followed when the company began recording the seminars and distributing copies to mass audiences. He sold the company in the 1980s and dabbled in politics.

Eventually, he launched Crestcom, a video management training system with live facilitation. Today, the company is active in 50 countries. Krause later applied this idea to educating children ages three to six. This new company, FasTracKids, sells DVDs that emphasize enrichment education, including public speaking.

A resident of Denver, Colo., Krause says he wants kids to have the same opportunities he had. He's involved with the National Association of Street Schools; and he established a scholarship, based on a public speaking competition, for students.

Thorson (B.S. '60) came to UW from the small community of Osage to study geology. One of his teachers was legendary geologist Sam Knight, whom Thorson called " a classical geologist and a wonderful man."

After graduating, Thorson went to work for his father's company, Black Hills Bentonite, and at age 22 helped to run the company. There were 20 employees at the time, and the offices were in Moorcroft. In 1964, after buying some bentonite property north of Casper, they moved to Casper. The growing company went into partnership with Bethlehem Steel, a major consumer of bentonite. Then another plant was built in Worland, and later still, the company purchased a competitor in Casper.

Today there are five plants and 100 employees, and Thorson has been president since 1978.

Thorson has been active in Rotary, serving as president in 1991, and helped to establish a community assistance effort between Wyoming and Delicias, Mexico. The club helped the town with fire trucks, clothing and hospital equipment. Thorson has made more than a dozen trips to the city over the years.

Among his other activities, he's been president of the Casper Chamber of Commerce and of the Wyoming Mining Association, and was involved in the formation of Leadership Wyoming. And whenever he can, he likes to organize his friends for snowmobiling, rafting and hiking trips.

Trujillo (B.S. '73, M.B.A. '74) has been referred to as the highest-ranking Hispanic in American business. He was the first UW student to earn an M.B.A. degree in just two semesters. Between his degrees, he interned with Mountain Bell Telephone Company and 20 years later, he became CEO of US West.

At age 32, Trujillo became the youngest officer in US West history when he managed Mountain Bell operations in New Mexico. In 1987 he created the Small Business Group, a new division that is now an industry benchmark, where revenues grew 300 percent. Five years later, he was named president and CEO of US West Marketing Resources.

As CEO, he made US West a top-performing Baby Bell company. The company in 1997 deployed the nation's first broad commercial offering of Digital Subscriber Line (DSL) high-speed access to the Internet for residential and business customers in Phoenix, earning him the title of the nation's first digital telecom CEO.

Trujillo has received many honors including induction into the Minority Media and Telecommunications Council Hall of Fame; serving on governor-appointed commissions in Colorado, Arizona and New Mexico and on the boards of Bank of America and the Dayton Hudson Corp. He was named one of the "100 Most Influential Hispanics in the Nation" by Hispanic Business Magazine and has served as chairman of Race for the Cure.

When US West merged with Qwest in 2000, Trujillo retired. He and his wife, Corine, now live in California.

Posted on Thursday, September 30, 2004