As Morgan Bale tells it, the path to her current position as an assistant professor at the BYU Marriott School of Business was made up of a series of small steps and promptings from the Lord. Bale says the most important thing she can teach her marketing students is that their Savior lives and loves them, and she hopes to give them the skills they need to make their own small steps forward.
“I feel like the Lord has been guiding me, my husband, and our family to where we needed to be—specific opportunities, people we needed to meet, places we needed to go, so we could be where we are today,” Bale says. “I wouldn’t have made it on my own.”
In Bale’s first semester as an undergrad, she took ECON 110: Economic Principles and Problems because her mother said the class was difficult and recommended that Bale get it out of the way early on in her studies. “It was really hard, but I really enjoyed it,” Bale says. “I decided that I wanted to major in economics.”
Bale completed all the coursework to earn her bachelor’s degree in economics in just three years, and married her husband, Cameron during her last semester. There was just one complication—her husband still had two years of school left at BYU, limiting her options for grad school.
“I had this kind of weird spot where we needed to stay in Provo so that he could finish his undergrad. I was interested in getting a PhD, but we couldn't go anywhere,” Bale says. So, she began an online master's in economics through Purdue University Global. “That gave me some time to continue my economics studies and also figure out what I wanted to do.”
Both Bale and her husband started talking with faculty from BYU Marriott about her interest in earning a PhD after a chance encounter with a professor in the gym. As they explored their options, they ended up speaking with a marketing professor—but Bale was skeptical about getting her PhD in marketing.
“I didn't think marketing aligned a lot with my interest, because I really love math modeling and that sort of thing,” she says. As Bale talked with the marketing professor, though, she learned about quantitative marketing, which focuses on data analysis and empirical modeling. She began to work as a research assistant in quantitative marketing while completing her master’s degree at Purdue. Bale explains, “That’s when I decided I wanted to do a PhD in quantitative marketing.”
Bale finished her master’s degree in economics at the same time her husband finished his undergraduate degree, and they applied to PhD programs together. They received acceptance letters from Drexel University and one other program.
Despite the other university having a high-rated PhD program and offering more stipends, Bale and her husband decided to go to Drexel. “We felt really strongly to go to Drexel,” she says. “That’s where we needed to be.”
At Drexel, Bale met Elea, an advisor who mentored her through the challenge of getting a PhD with young children at home. “I don’t know that I could have done it without the support I had from Elea,” Bale says. “One of the reasons it was so important for us to go to Drexel was to have that specific individual in my life, who was going to help me get through something that was so difficult.”
Five years, two daughters, and one PhD later, Bale began looking at job options. Right as she graduated, BYU Marriott had two faculty positions open in the marketing department, “which was actually so unusual, to have two spots open for hiring,” Bale recalls. So, she and her husband both applied and received the positions.
“When I came back here for my interview, I remember feeling the Spirit really strongly on campus,” she recalls. “The atmosphere feels different—it feels so good. Clearly, the Spirit's here.”
Now a faculty member at BYU Marriott, Bale says she loves the flexibility she gets with her research. She values the variety of her half-dozen research projects—which include the relationship between brand equity and retail media and the impact of influencer marketing on consumer well-being—as well as the opportunity to take her time studying them. “In research, it’s so important to thoroughly understand everything you’re doing and take time to learn the newest methodology,” Bale says.
In addition to conducting research of her own, Bale teaches MKTG 401: Marketing Research—one of the first classes incoming marketing students take. “On the days when I’m teaching, the reason I get up and come to work in the morning is that I'm excited to see my students. I love the spirit that they bring to class, and they are so incredibly kind,” Bale says. “I think that’s what’s so cool about this job is that I get both of those aspects: research and teaching. It’s not just one or the other.”
Bale’s path from getting an economics degree to becoming a faculty member teaching and researching marketing was full of little blessings and promptings, she says.
“I feel like it was a series of small steps that were guiding me in a direction; along the way, I couldn’t see exactly how it was going to work out,” Bale reflects. “Later, it was a lot easier to look back on all those small steps and see how they were pointing me toward where the Lord wanted me to go.”