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Alumni Experience Design MPA 2016
Steve Thacker, city manager of Centerville, Utah, was honored for his legacy of exceptional management in governmental positions for over the past thirty years.
MPA alum Kena Jo Mathews has built her life around volunteer and nonprofit work, though she started out on a different path. “Sometimes you end up where you’re supposed to be even if you don’t realize that’s where you want to be,” she says. While studying political science at the University of Utah, Mathews worked for a senatorial candidate. But when he lost the election, she changed course, volunteering at Habitat for Humanity, where she laid the foundation for her career.
The residential staff could hear the soft crying of Mrs. C. from down the hall. A victim of dementia, the woman would sit alone by her door at Wisteria Place in Abilene, Texas, weeping and longing for her home and her daughter. She remained distant behind her tears—until Leticia Stucki, the resident recreational therapist and a 2014 BYU grad, discovered an astounding way to reach her: Czechoslovakian polka. The music reminded Mrs. C. of when she was a child and watched her parents dance in the kitchen.
Warren Price is about to step in waist-high water in the middle of the Provo River when a bull moose saunters up the pedestrian bridge thirty yards to the south.
“Reach for the stars” is a figurative goal for most of us, but for Kevin Watts, a 1986 graduate of the BYU Masters of Public Administration program, it is an everyday reality.
A group of seasoned farmers sit facing Rebecca Loveland, a recent college grad in her mid-twenties, as she leads their discussion on everything from daily planning to marketing to an upcoming potato audit. Loveland feels inexperienced but plows forward, relying on the leadership skills she developed with her Marriott School training to make decisions and collaborate effectively.
By day, Arie Van De Graaff is a public servant, but by night he is an accomplished cartoonist.