The person behind the work
A person, not a prophet.
Michael Polzin founded SolutionWright Universal. A high-school dropout who taught himself technology, built a company to the Inc. 5000, then spent a decade handing that ladder to kids. The dates, the awards, and the press below were written at the time by reporters he did not control. You do not have to take his word for any of it.
I am not hiding. I stood in those rooms.
Why this page exists
Held to the same standard as the work.
The rest of this site argues from evidence and lets the data carry it. The record of the founder is held to the same standard. He dropped out of high school as a junior and finished later through a correspondence course. He was self-taught in technology and built a career, then a company, out of a hobby. The stumbles and the wins are reported together, on purpose, because that is the only way to keep transparency and credibility in balance.
The through-line
One loop, lived before it was named.
Long before he had language like active inference, he was living the thing UNI describes: a world that felt a size too small, and the slow, stubborn work of widening it, first for himself, then for everyone he could reach. The method we use today is LOOP: Listen, Observe, Orchestrate, Partner.
A rough launch
The work that taught the work
Build, then give it back
Bigger worlds
The record
Build a company, then hand kids the ladder.
He founded Leeward Business Advisors and served as CEO, growing it from a $500 start to a valuation over $3 million in six years, and from three people to more than two dozen, with a minimum salary set well above the local poverty line on purpose. The firm was named to the Inc. 5000 in 2019.
Run from the same desk: five consecutive years of Hour of Code at KTEC, a three-year Computer Club where students built PCs for a real client, Junior Achievement, all-girl CyberPatriots teams that placed at the state level, and the only CyberPatriots CyberCamp in Wisconsin.
Corporate decades
At scale, in the background, for thirty-five years.
The community work ran in parallel with a long career in IT operations and incident management for some of the largest enterprises in the country: Allstate, Microsoft, and others. Mostly out of state, mostly under the hood, almost always at 3 a.m. when something critical broke. These figures are from the public resume, kept current.
35+ yrs
350,000+
$4M+
40,000%+
He later went back and earned a Bachelor of Arts in Business Management from Cardinal Stritch University. The loop closes when you decide it does.
The mentor
The one who taught him to talk with a room.
David Gilbert
Dave took him fishing, to horse farms, to flea markets, to anywhere curiosity might grow. He did not lecture. He let a kid talk to him, and talked back, like that kid was already a person worth listening to. That was the difference, and it is the foundation under every workshop, every classroom, and every meeting on this page.
Dave showed him, plainly and without naming it, what active inference feels like from the inside: a person paying close attention, updating in real time, treating the other person as a partner in the model. The rest was just learning to do that at scale.
Recognition
Awarded by others, not by us.
KABA Fast Five
Project of the Year
10 Exceptional People
Inc. 5000
I don’t think anything I do is exceptional. For me, it’s about trying to be exponential.There’s so many good people and good things happening in our community. It’s really about what we can do together.
Michael Polzin, Kenosha News, September 2018.
In good company
Collaborators in the current work.
The record is open partly because their work deserves the same standard. Collaboration is checkable too.
Dr. Alianna Maren
Michael Strike
Open for inspection
The public record, with dates.
These were written by reporters at the time, in the Kenosha News and other local Wisconsin press, and are archived in a community portfolio. They are here so the claims above can be checked against the record, not taken on faith. A few pieces ran across the affiliated Kenosha News and Journal Times.
- Sep 10, 2018
- Michael Polzin has built a commitment to community while building a business. Deneen Smith, Kenosha News
- Sep 20, 2018
- 'Exceptional People' recognized at awards luncheon. Jeffrey Zampanti, Kenosha News
- Aug 15, 2019
- Inc. selects two Kenosha firms as fast-growing companies. James Lawson, Kenosha News
- Apr 19, 2018
- RCEDC celebrates Foxconn and more (Project of the Year, Start IT). Michael Burke, The Journal Times
- Aug 16, 2017
- Program to teach entry-level IT skills (Start IT launch). Jonathon Sadowski, The Journal Times
- Dec 6, 2019
- Decoding AI: KTEC students learn about coding from a local expert. Dave Fidlin, Kenosha News
- Mar 20, 2018
- KTEC computer science club members design systems with real-world applications. Terry Flores, Kenosha News
- Nov 11, 2018
- Students donate company profits to Shalom Center (JA Company Program). Kenosha News
Originals are held in the community portfolio and available on request. Many now sit behind paywalls; the archived copies keep the record public.
The kid who is told he is too much. The employee a system has written off. The small business everyone assumes cannot grow. In every one of those rooms, the most useful question was never what is wrong with them. It was: what about the world around them is too small, and what is ours to widen? Scarcity is an accounting, and what is manufactured can be dismantled.
That is the whole of Universal Natural Intelligence, taken from a county to a thesis. The record above is offered as evidence that this is buildable, in the open, with everyone who will help.
The point of an open record
If a world can be widened for one person, it can be measured, and it can be done again.
The record is open. So is the invitation.