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Where will your BYU Marriott degree take you? Read about the careers our alumni are in and the interesting things they are doing.
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Alumni Spotlight

Game, Tech, Match

October 08, 2014
Call it a cruel but fortunate twist of fate: Dan Handy’s companies tend to undergo extreme growth when it comes time for him to hit the books. As an undergrad and a grad student at the Marriott School, the current CEO of Bluehost.com guided two internet start-ups to success, sometimes smashing against current trends with a Ping-Pong paddle.
2 Min Read
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Alumni Spotlight

Back to Business School

October 08, 2014
As soon as Thaylene Lowe Rogers made her decision to return to school for an Executive MBA, she hit the GMAT prep books. During a trip to Newport Beach, California, vacation time turned into study time as she and her son began plowing through the math section. After a year of brushing up, she was in. By 2015 she’ll be sporting a new Marriott School degree on her office wall.
1 Min Read
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Alumni Spotlight

Making Waves in Family Fun

October 08, 2014
Fifty-six years and 1.3 million birthday parties may seem impossible, but it sums up John Huish’s career. He’s had a hand in facilitating cake-and-candle celebrations across five states and has provided jobs for more than one hundred thousand people.
1 Min Read
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Alumni Spotlight

Speaker of the House

October 08, 2014
The Utah Governor’s Mansion was blanketed in soft, blue light. The occasion was World Autism Awareness Day 2014, and buildings across the country were swapping bulbs to highlight a disorder that affects one in sixty-eight American children.
8 Min Read
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Alumni Spotlight

Rank and File

October 08, 2014
Curtis Bedont thought he knew what it meant to be in the military. Though he spent his formative years on bases in foreign outposts, his fighter-pilot father never faced deployment.
9 Min Read
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Alumni Spotlight

BUSINESSMAN WITH A FIREHOUSE BUCKET

September 05, 2014
Randy Judd’s story begins in the Ozarks of Arkansas, where he grew up with no indoor plumbing and went to school in a two-room schoolhouse. His family’s financial situation created what he feels was a truly fortunate opportunity to work full-time during college—a path that led him to the restaurant business.
2 Min Read
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Alumni Spotlight

Q&A With Advocate Mirella Petersen

June 28, 2014
Alum Mirella Petersen is bold, organized, and driven—the perfect combination for getting autism insurance reform passed in Utah.
2 Min Read
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Alumni Spotlight

MPA Alum Joins Walmart to Create Change

June 27, 2014
When Jackie Saumweber joined the BYU MPA program, she didn't know she would find her niche in corporate social responsibility.
2 Min Read
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Alumni Spotlight

Making the A-List

June 12, 2014
Working at the Oracle Corporation, alum Liz Wiseman found herself constantly surrounded by intelligent people. But she noticed an ebb and flow—not of intelligence but of how leaders capitalized on or closed off that intelligence. One executive she coached was brilliant but shut down others, leaving their ideas untapped. Wiseman searched for something to share with this leader about the dynamic he was caught in but found nothing. “Someone needed to research how what leaders did either diminished or multiplied the intelligence of the people around them,” Wiseman says. “This seemed like a worthy pursuit, so I just did it.”
2 Min Read
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Alumni Spotlight

Fund-Raising Facial Hair

June 12, 2014
It only took five seconds for Ryan Judkins’s boss to approve his beard plan. Surprised, Judkins, a sales representative for Callaway Golf and a normally clean-cut guy, asked, “You do realize I might have a beard that’s five, six, or seven inches long at one point?”
2 Min Read
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Alumni Spotlight

JOINT VENTURE: JUDITH & DOUGLAS MAUGHAN

June 03, 2014
In the winter of 1989, the snow and pine trees of Sundance Resort set the backdrop for Doug and Judith Maughan’s second date. Doug, an MBA student at the time, had asked Judith to accompany him to a Valentine’s dinner and dance sponsored by the Marriott School. “He was handsome, smart, and probably the most polite man I had ever met,” says Judith of her date. Doug was also persistent and outdoorsy—during the summers, he caught salmon in Alaska as a commercial fisherman to help pay for school. After Doug worked his charms that evening in the mountains, dates with Judith became increasingly frequent. Sharing space in the Tanner Building, where she was also a Marriott School student, helped fuel their courtship.
1 Min Read
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Alumni Spotlight

PARALLEL PATHS: ROD AND JEN HINZE

May 22, 2014
Jen sat in the BYU Varsity Theatre eager to learn on her first day of class in the accounting junior core. Rod Hinze was also in class that day, but he found it hard to focus on academics once he saw Jen. When the teacher announced that the students would be forming two-person teams, Rod knew who his partner would be—Jen didn’t have a chance to look around before he was leaping over the seats to get to her. “I looked for the cutest girl in the class and Jen was sitting two rows in front of me, so I literally jumped over the two rows and sat next to her,” Rod says. “She was a little surprised when I asked her to be my partner, but she said yes.”
2 Min Read
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Alumni Spotlight

WAITING GAME: MIKE AND MARTISSA SPENCER

May 15, 2014
For Martissa Spencer, patience is definitely a virtue. When Martissa met her now-husband Mike in September 1991, she was busy having her first real romance with the newly returned missionary she had dated in high school. Martissa had plans to serve a mission of her own and was surprised to find out that her boyfriend wasn’t willing to wait. The relationship ended. “I couldn’t change my course,” Martissa says. “I felt very strongly about serving a mission.”
1 Min Read
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Alumni Spotlight

Melodic Progression

February 07, 2014
“Citius! Altius! Fortius!” Heralding the commencement of the 2002 Winter Olympics, the 360-member Mormon Tabernacle Choir reverberated John Williams’s “Call of the Champions” across Rice-Eccles Stadium.
7 Min Read
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Alumni Spotlight

A New Home for Your Nachos

February 07, 2014
During the housing collapse, the sweltering summer heat of Phoenix was no place for a young salesman pushing pest control. But for Adam Keys it was just the kind of pressure needed to get the creative juices flowing. “Nobody had money and nobody liked salesmen,” Keys remembers. It was then that Keys matched the perfect product with its target audience. “I sold No Soliciting signs door-to-door,” Keys says. “Eighty percent of people who would laugh when they opened the door would buy it.” But this wasn’t just funny business: the 2011 finance graduate paid his college bills, learned graphic design, and gained experience running his own company.
2 Min Read
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Alumni Spotlight

One of DC’s Decision Makers

February 07, 2014
In the area of market research, Cathy Chamberlain is a one-woman political powerhouse. Her influence, as well as the results of her studies, has been spread across the country from Washington, DC, back to the West Coast, and overseas as well. Since graduating from BYU in 1973 with a degree in business education, she’s tallied up more than thirty years of experience in market research and is still going strong.
2 Min Read
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Alumni Spotlight

A True Entrepreneurial Experience

February 07, 2014
When Josh Steimle won the BYU business plan competition (now known as the Miller New Venture Challenge) in 2001, he was awarded the $5,000 he needed to make payroll for the week and the confidence to keep his new company, MWI, going for the next twelve years.
2 Min Read
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Alumni Spotlight

Serving Up Goodness

February 07, 2014
Pretty Govindji was always an avid viewer of the Food Network, but when her sons came into the picture, her investment in tasty meals took on new meaning. Dinnertime goals soon centered on organic cooking, and before too long, Govindji realized what she served food on might matter just as much as good fruits and veggies.
2 Min Read
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