The following are students who were highlighted in BYU Marriott's 2023 Annual Report on page 13.
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Omar Aburouss came all the way from Jordan to attend BYU because he believes it’s a university with dual excellence. “BYU is one of the top schools for athletics right now. It’s also one of the top business schools academically,” he explains. Aburouss has embraced both athletics and academics at BYU, running the 100-meter and 200-meter sprint events on the track team and enjoying the diverse perspectives in the finance program. “In my finance classes, there’s not necessarily one right answer,” Aburouss says. “There are multiple ways to answer a question and there are multiple ways to understand a topic.” Aburouss hopes his future holds success not only in the finance field but also on the track field. He’s currently training with his BYU track coach and attending special meets to qualify for competing in the next Olympics. This summer, Aburouss might be racing from a finance internship to Paris, where he hopes to represent Jordan in the 2024 Olympics.
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Hailey Bronson grew up playing soccer competitively in Memphis, Tennessee. Her high school team trained in Manchester, England, and then won a state and a national championship back in the US. When she came to BYU, though, she shifted her focus to academics. “Ultimately, I decided to move forward with education and find ways to fuel my competitiveness,” Bronson says. She started as a mechanical engineering major and then served in the Germany Frankfurt Mission. When Bronson returned to school, she discovered that BYU Marriott’s information systems (IS) program would fill her craving for both competition and camaraderie. “When I figured out that technology can connect me with another person, my passion to learn more about IS increased exponentially,” Bronson explains. Now a junior in the IS program, Bronson plans to apply for the master of information systems management (MISM) program. She hopes to begin her studies in fall 2024.
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After returning from a Church mission in Minnesota, Kirsten Keith found a new home within the marketing program. “BYU Marriott is so driven to help its students find belonging—both in school and after they leave,” she shares. A senior who is originally from San Antonio, Keith has also found belonging on an intramural ultimate frisbee team and in the workplace through two student jobs at BYU Marriott: she mentors students and collaborates with faculty in her position as the vice president of pre-marketing mentorship for the Marketing Association, and she consults real-world clients in the Marketing Lab. Just after receiving a postgraduation job offer from Anglepoint, a software asset management company where Keith interned, she came across one of her junior core professors in the Tanner Building hallway. She shared the good news, and he celebrated with her. His enthusiasm reminded Keith that “when you come to the marketing program, you know that you’re family.”
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A native of Midway, Utah, Garrett Watts grew up close to BYU campus, but his study of strategic management has taken him around the globe. Watts has trekked through Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, and Paraguay, visiting companies and learning about commerce and inflation. A study abroad took him to the UK and India, where he helped a family-run sari recycling business expand into the e-commerce space. And in October 2023, he traveled to Ukraine as part of his internship with 47G, a trade association that represents the aerospace, defense, and cyber industries in Utah. The trip helped Utah-based companies support the Ukrainian military with minesweeping, radio communications, and armor for trucks and soldiers. Before his internship with 47G, Watts worked in Washington, DC, for a semester, which piqued his interest in careers that blend private- and public-sector work. Travel experiences abroad remind Watts why he loves his program: “Strategy is all about finding multifaceted solutions and understanding the big picture so you can make the right decision,” he says.
