A painter, dancer, and designer, Kari Durrant describes herself as a primarily right-brained person. She intended to major in dance at BYU, but after encountering recreational therapy as part of a class assignment, Durrant eventually made the switch to recreation management. Her new major, she discovered, would enable her to use her creative side in ways she hadn’t expected.
After completing her degree in 2015, Durrant worked as a recreational therapist at Mountain View Hospital in Payson, Utah, and as a recreational therapist and data analyst at an addiction recovery center in Draper, Utah. Later, she taught English as a Second Language (ESL) for a year on VIPKid, an online education service, and started her own custom art and graphic design business, Kari On Creating. She also taught watercolor and lettering at the Art Cottage, an art school in West Jordan, Utah.
Exercising creativity was a key element of each of these positions. When Durrant joined the University of Utah School of Medicine as the continuing medical education project coordinator, she put her creative skills to a new use: analytics. “I fell in love with Excel in an information systems class at BYU,” she says. “Over the years I’ve discovered my love for data and analytics, and I love that I can foster my creativity with numbers and problem-solving.”
Durrant’s responsibilities included coordinating more than 140 educational series comprising over 3,000 events per year. Her favorite thing about the job was “finding ways to make processes more efficient,” she says. “I’ve almost never come across an issue or slow process that couldn’t be made more efficient with a spreadsheet.”
When she felt she needed more of a challenge in her work, Durrant accepted her current position as operations manager at a fitness and nutrition coaching company called L8R Lifestyle in South Jordan, Utah. She admits she wasn’t sure about the company at first. “I interned in an eating disorder treatment center,” she explains. “Most fitness companies and health products shout ‘Get skinny now! Take this weight loss pill! Do this fad diet!’ Most of these are scams and feed weight-loss culture in an unhealthy way.” However, when Durrant learned that L8R Lifestyle provided education on a sustainable lifestyle, including healthy exercise and a science-based approach to eat- ing well while still enjoying favorite foods, her concerns were settled.
Though they seemed disparate at the time, Durrant is grateful for the varied fields she’s worked in because “a lot of my random skills all happened to apply to this job,” she says. “I had experience running my own social media for my business and doing graphic design and project management.” She currently manages the company’s social media and client information, designs promotional materials and programs, and tracks and analyzes company statistics and scorecards.
Durrant continues to use her artistic skills by occasionally teaching hand-lettering workshops using the book she wrote, Brush Lettering and Beyond. From 2014 to 2016, she served on the board of the Utah Recreation Therapy Association and as the volunteer coordinator of Provo’s Freedom Run. Aside from art, Durrant’s hobbies include biking, hiking, traveling, and spending time with her husband, Tommy, and their two sons.
“I owe so much of my happiness to the gospel,” Durrant says. She remembers falling on hard times during high school; when she no longer had money to buy coffee and a breakfast burrito at the local convenience store, the store manager offered her a burrito and orange juice for free each morning. Durrant became close with the manager’s family, the Breedloves, who later introduced her to the gospel. “The Breedlove family were and continue to be great examples of Christ and His love,” she says.
