Almost every May, between four hundred and seven hundred people, attend a Norwegian Constitution Day celebration at the International Peace Gardens in Salt Lake City and enjoy traditional Norwegian lefse flatbread and Solo orange soda. For more than a decade, the chair of the event’s committee has been 1995 business management grad Steve Affleck, who doesn’t have even a bit of Norwegian ancestry.
Affleck has, however, come to know the Nordic country well. His brother served a mission for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in nearby Sweden, and Affleck’s parents and brother returned home from touring Sweden and Norway with photographs that included a young, beautiful Norwegian woman. They encouraged Affleck to get in touch. “I was like,
‘Mom, that’s never going to happen,’” Affleck says. “‘She’s five thousand miles away.’” But after the woman, Catharina Karlsson, and her family visited Utah, “it was like a lightning strike for both of us,” Affleck says. The pair were married less than a year later while Affleck was studying at BYU.
Now Affleck volunteers significant amounts of time each year to help keep Utah’s Norwegian community united. In addition to overseeing most of the event’s logistics, he also arranges for various guest speakers, including World War II veterans and a representative from the Norwegian consulate. “It’s not that long, but it’s super fun,” Affleck says of the celebration. “It takes all of these people who love Norway and all of these people from Norway and connects them.”
Before becoming familiar with the Land of the Midnight Sun, Affleck chose to pursue a degree in business management because of his interest in marketing. He was sure that he never wanted a career in sales. “I’d tried it as a kid and swore I’d never do it as a profession,” he explains, referencing the door-to-door sales his dad once had him do to gain experience and earn a little money. But when Affleck took a proposal-writing job after graduating from BYU Marriott, the sales representative position over him became available, and he was asked to step in.
“They were looking for someone who could cover the gap until they found a new sales rep,” Affleck explains. “It wasn’t until I was doing it for a little while that I realized, oh, you know what? I kind of like doing this.” Affleck has been involved with sales ever since, working at companies such as Omniture, Adobe, and Proofpoint.
Affleck is currently the vice president of sales at Workfront, a position he has held since 2016. He came to the company seeking a particular culture— one that was client-facing and selfless, similar to his experience at Omniture.
“When I came to Workfront, I felt that same draw, that same excitement to do something great,” he says. “Working with any department at Workfront, you see that everyone just wants to do what’s right for the customer.”
Now residing in Sandy, Utah, Affleck has six children and has completed the LoToJa bike race (a 206-mile ride from Logan, Utah, to Jackson, Wyoming) three times. He still enjoys his work as much as ever, including how he felt on day one: “I was like, okay, this is almost like coming home,” he says. “I just knew that I belonged here.”
