Stewarding Success

Six thousand miles from home, Malissa Fifita rolls up her sleeves, a flower in her hair. “I believe you should serve and contribute wherever you are,” says the native Tongan, whose research for a government agency addresses challenges faced by Utah Lake: water scarcity, invasive species, pollution, and other threats to humans, fish, and wildlife.

BYU Marriott students rolled up their sleeves to clear brush and battle invasive grasses during a Saturday morning of service in September 2024. The volunteers partnered with the Sustainability Office and Y Serve to help native plants thrive in a local garden.

It’s an undertaking as big as the lake itself. But Fifita, a 2024 BYU Marriott graduate, is up to the task. By comparing management practice and performance at applied research centers throughout the United States—each dedicated to a specific body of water—Fifita has found that ecosystems thrive most when partnerships prevail. Interviews with experts and an AI analysis of her data back up her claim. “Over and over, collaboration is the common theme,” she says.

Fifita is well equipped for such work; with a bachelor’s degree in political science from BYU–Hawaii, an MPA from BYU Marriott, and a coveted spot in a doctoral program at The Ohio State University, she’s making ripples—if not waves—toward a healthier, more resilient lake. “Whatever I take on, I pour my heart and mind into it,” she says. “I want my work to have a positive impact on others. People matter.”

Her BYU mentor, Rob Christensen, agrees. “Malissa joined the MPA program wanting to make a difference, to serve, to solve problems, and to help others thrive,” says the Romney Institute of Public Service and Ethics director, who nudged Fifita to apply for the Utah Lake sustainability role before she graduated. “Brilliantly, she understood that social and environmental problems are intertwined. So are the solutions,” Christensen says.

Now more than ever, that interconnectedness of people and planet—and the stewardship mindset of future leaders like Fifita—is driving sustainability engagement throughout BYU Marriott, from courses, research, and initiatives to employee and student culture.

Greener Postures

Paul Godfrey has had a front-row seat to this growing interest in sustainability. “Over the course of my career, I’ve seen a sea change,” says the business strategy professor who joined BYU Marriott in 1994. “There’s always been an interest, but for more and more students, it’s gone from ‘Hey, I’d like to fit this in’ to ‘This is important to me, and I really want to make my career in this area.’”

The result is a groundswell of new and updated courses. Four years ago, for example, Global Supply Chain Management 414: Introduction to Sustainable Business didn’t exist. In 2024 the elective course drew in more than 100 students, filling three sections. Led by assistant professor Bekki Brau, class participants meet with business leaders, discuss headlines, read case studies, and take on personal stewardship challenges, such as driving less or eating more whole foods.¹

The students have even lent their expertise to BYU’s Sustainability Office, presenting unique perspectives to inform the Sustainable BYU 2030 Plan, a road map for coordinated stewardship efforts on campus. Faculty and operational staff behind the plan listened in, asked questions, and workshopped students’ ideas together in real time. “It was one of my favorite projects this year,” says Roman Wang, a global supply chain management (GSCM) major from Ontario, Canada, who interned with Boeing in Seattle shortly after completing the course.

Everyone with a business major or minor—a total of about 1,400 students during a typical fall semester—completes at least one sustainability module in the required course Accounting 200: Principles of Accounting. The School of Accountancy (SOA) also includes sustainability modules in two of the 400-level courses taken by all accounting majors.

And in 2025 a new course, Accounting 532: Sustainability Reporting for Accountants, will explore trends and metrics for environmental, social, and governance (ESG) frameworks and reporting requirements.² It’s cutting edge, say instructors Cassy Budd and Melissa Larson, because the playbook is still being written. As of 2024, ESG performance disclosures are voluntary in the United States but mandatory in the European Union. “It’s not uncommon for us to teach things that are not in any textbooks,” Budd says.

A Deep Dive

For BYU Marriott faculty engaged in research, sustainability invites collaboration, and that fuels innovation and insight that can benefit the world.

Studying the intersection of profitability with corporate responsibility, environmental stewardship, and social impact, Godfrey examined the 100-year history of Ecolab, a Minnesota-based public company with annual revenues of $15 billion.³

Godfrey describes the problem of sustainability—and the solution—this way: “It’s falsely perceived as antithetical to economic performance; we can either be profitable, or we can be sustainable.” Godfrey underscores that the two goals are mutually reinforcing. “To be sustainable, you have to be profitable. That’s a core part of sustainability,” he says. “What you find from companies such as Ecolab is that they’re in the top quartile of profitability of their industry because they’re focused on sustainability and creating new customer value.”

The result of Godfrey’s research was an award-winning book, coauthored with Ecolab’s chief sustainability officer.⁴ Now, Godfrey is looking at best practices for what he calls “sustainability 3.0,” which moves beyond a company’s operations toward building an ecosystem and a community. “It’s about integration,” he says. “Do you have the strategic alignment, cultural consistency, and organizational heft to get it done?”

BYU’s Sustainability Office reports that since 2021, some 200 professors across campus have engaged in sustainability research. That number will likely increase, thanks to the new funding for interdisciplinary research on environmental stewardship announced in 2024 by BYU’s Research Development Office. In the Tanner Building, BYU Marriott faculty meet regularly to share research and teaching interests and explore potential partnerships. “It’s a helpful space for collaboration,” a time to learn what others are doing and determine the best ways to work together, says Brau, who leads the gatherings.

Love the Problem

At the Ballard Center for Social Impact, environmental issues are increasingly at the forefront. That’s because in many parts of the world, poverty, disease, and other social ills are fueled by environmental problems such as pollution, climate change, and biodiversity loss.

“Climate vulnerability is one of the greatest humanitarian challenges our generation will face, so it’s more important than ever to love the problem, not the solution,” says Eva Witesman, the center’s director. Witesman also serves on BYU’s Sustainability Working Group—a team of students, faculty, and staff focused on long-term planning and visioning. “This means we spend time deepening our understanding of the problem by recognizing its context, contributing factors, and negative consequences,” she says.

Currently, the Ballard Center runs four social impact labs that focus on “real people in real need,”⁵ including the Uru people of Bolivia’s Lake Poopó, where drought has threatened livelihoods that rely on agriculture and traditional practices tied to the lake’s ecosystem. The lab takes a multidisciplinary approach, integrating data and academic research with on-the-ground insights gathered from local nongovernmental organizations and community members to address broader socioeconomic challenges exacerbated by environmental degradation.

For other problems near and far, BYU Marriott students are publishing impressive research. Ballard Briefs, written by students and added to a publicly accessible online library, explore the context, causes, consequences, and practices of current global issues. Reaching tens of thousands of readers per month, the publications aim to inform and inspire changemakers in the nonprofit, business, and government sectors.

In 2023, Nathan Thompson, now an environmental science and sustainability graduate, authored a Ballard Brief on climate change—some 8,000 words plus 247 footnotes.⁶ A year later, his twin brother, David, a computer science major, wrote about the Great Salt Lake, which has shrunk to dangerously low levels since the 1980s.⁷ “These are ‘super wicked problems,’” says Nathan, borrowing a phrase from sociology. “The longer it takes to address them, the harder it will be to fix them.”

Blending urgency with optimism, the Ballard Center offers a minor in global and community impact, a social impact MBA emphasis, and popular courses—including Marriott School of Business 375: Social Impact: Do Good Better—that draw hundreds of students each semester. There are also social initiatives, conferences, competitions, grants, internships, and student job opportunities. “Because of all this on-campus experience, we’re finding that our students are getting higher-impact jobs upon graduation,” Witesman says. “They’re really in a position to make a lot of positive change from the moment they step off campus.”

Heaven and Earth

True to its mission of developing leaders of faith, intellect, and character, BYU Marriott takes a unique approach to confronting sustainability problems. As Christensen puts it, “The word we use is stewardship. The mission is helping God’s children thrive.”

In the October 2022 general conference and again at the BYU President’s Leadership Summit in May 2024, Bishop Gérald Caussé, who oversees the Church’s temporal affairs, taught that earthly stewardship is a sacred responsibility. That includes a “duty to love, respect, and care for all human beings with whom we share the earth,” he said in 2022 to a churchwide audience. “They are sons and daughters of God, our sisters and our brothers, and their eternal happiness is the very purpose of the work of creation.”⁸

In that spirit, BYU organized its first-ever Stewardship Over the Earth and Human Family academic conference in March 2024, cohosted by the International Vice President’s Office, the Office of Belonging, the Sustainability Office, and the Ballard Center. A second conference, For the Benefit of the World, took place in November 2024 and featured faculty presentations on global socio-environmental challenges.

From Utah Lake to Lake Poopó and beyond, the world needs stewards. Why not lead the charge at BYU Marriott, asks Larson from the SOA. “We’ve been given a stewardship and an ability to care for the earth and for one another,” she says. “I think it resonates so deeply with our students and with us as a community.”

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Written by Bremen Leak
Photos by Aaron Cornia

About the Author
Bremen Leak leads strategic planning for sustainability and resilience at BYU. An experienced program manager, he has worked previously for Yale University, Johns Hopkins University, and the Natural Resource Governance Institute.

This article was published in BYU Marriott's 2024 Annual Report, pages 2–5.

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Notes

1. See Melissa Een, “Cultivating Corporate Stewardship,” Marriott Alumni Magazine, Summer 2024, 25, marriott.byu.edu/magazine/student-experiences/cultivating-corporate-stewardship.
2. For information on additional research by BYU faculty and a more thorough explanation of ESG frameworks, see Bremen Leak, “The Little CSR Trend That Could,” Marriott Alumni Magazine, Summer 2022, 12–17, marriott.byu.edu/magazine/feature/the-little-csr-trend-that-could.
3. “Ecolab Revenue 2010–2024: ECL,” Macrotrends, 2024, macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/ECL/ecolab/revenue.
4. See Paul Godfrey and Emilio R. Tenuta, Clean: Lessons from Ecolab’s Century of Positive Impact (Hoboken, New Jersey: Wiley, 2023).
5. “Collaborating at BYU to Care for Those in Need,” Ballard Labs, Brigham Young University Ballard Center for Social Impact, accessed October 4, 2024, ballardlabs.byu.edu.
6. See Nathan Thompson, “Impacts of Climate Change in the United States,” Ballard Brief, Spring 2023, BYU Ballard Center, ballardbrief.byu.edu/issue-briefs/impacts-of-climate-change-in-the-united-states.
7. See David Thompson, “The Aridification of the Great Salt Lake,” Ballard Brief, Summer 2024, BYU Ballard Center, ballardbrief.byu.edu/issue-briefs/the-aridification-of-the-great-salt-lake.
8. Gérald Caussé, “Our Earthly Stewardship,” Liahona, November 2022, 58.