Whitney Johnson had never hired a BYU Marriott intern before. But when the founder and CEO of WLJ Advisors, a four-year-old management consultancy startup, received a plea from Dean Brigitte C. Madrian asking for help, her response was swift.
“My immediate thought was, ‘We’re going to help. We’ll take some interns. I’m not sure how we’ll use them, but we’ll use them,’” says Johnson, who is also a member of BYU Marriott’s National Advisory Council (NAC).
One of dozens of NAC members and BYU Marriott alumni who responded to the dean’s email asking to create and identify internships and jobs, Johnson says she initially felt that she had been called on to help, “but the fact is, we were the ones that received the help.”
Johnson and project manager Jennifer Brotherson, who was assigned to oversee the WLJ interns, went through a careful matching process to select their interns. “We looked at what skills the students had and what skills they wanted to develop,” Johnson explains. “And we looked at our needs.”
Ultimately, says Brotherson, “we wanted to make sure that their efforts would build and strengthen our programs, but we also wanted to help them build skills they were interested in.”
Brotherson worked with ten BYU Marriott interns in total. The interns, who all worked remotely, were assigned to projects in tech development, book research, and marketing. They worked independently but collaborated often, meeting on Zoom with each other and WLJ employees as needed.
“The interns were committed, they showed initiative, and they wanted to learn,” Johnson reports. “They made presentations and, in some instances, went beyond even what we’d asked of them. They wanted to help WLJ grow, and they used the autonomy we gave them to actually develop the projects in ways we hadn’t anticipated. They delighted us and surprised us.”
WLJ Advisors hosted two more student interns in fall 2020, and Johnson plans on continuing to host interns moving forward. “We’re fans,” she says. “We will have BYU Marriott interns at all times. Their contributions allowed us to advance projects that wouldn’t have progressed for months. We couldn’t have asked for more.”
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This story was featured in BYU Marriott's 2020 Annual Report.
