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Alumni Business Management 2015 2010–2014
The roar of more than thirty thousand screaming fans had just been swallowed by an avalanche of noise from an F-22 Raptor and an F-15 fighter jet streaking overhead.
When Terisa Poulsen Gabrielsen finished her business management degree, the year was 1982 and the economy was bleak. Though she was determined to enter the business world, her best offer was a job teaching accounting at Salt Lake Community College. There, Gabrielsen discovered an unexpected love for teaching that kept her at the school for the next twenty-five years. Despite that love, she realized she had a job rather than a career. That realization became a turning point that would take her to the University of Utah, then to the streets of Philadelphia, and back to a BYU classroom.
In 1980 finance alum Ryan Tibbitts was one year away from graduating, but it wasn’t the textbooks he was hitting hard. Tibbitts was gearing up, along with the rest of the BYU football team, to take on Southern Methodist University—a showdown now immortalized in Tibbitts’s new book, Hail Mary: The Inside Story of BYU’s 1980 Miracle Bowl Comeback.
“Deciding to be a full-time mom over working full-time is the hardest decision I’ve ever had to make,” says Marie Nielson Canaday. In fact, it’s a decision she still struggles with. While tending to two active boys keeps her very busy, Canaday is nurturing both her sons and her thriving love of all things business.
Jolene Day Weston’s two children can practically ski circles around her, even though they’re only three and a half. Her career path and journey to motherhood have taken a similar circuitous course.
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.
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.
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.
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?”
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.
Cameron Moll knew he wanted to give something back to the customers who made his entrepreneurial venture a success, but he had no idea it would take him halfway around the world with an international celebrity.
Cameron Moll knew he wanted to give something back to the customers who made his entrepreneurial venture a success, but he had no idea it would take him halfway around the world with an international celebrity.
Matthew Bowman likes leading the pack. His salesmanship has landed him a prestigious award and created a career leading fast-growing sales and customer service companies.
Jerry Koenig knows a thing or two about working in the trenches. In his more than sixty-six years of job experience, Koenig has been no stranger to challenging tasks, as he has used his dedicated work ethic to achieve great success.
Matt Jarvis is a sports fan who doesn’t have to separate business from pleasure. After growing up playing a number of sports, he now has a job many young boys dream of working for the National Football League.
Kristen Hill knows that an opportunity missed may never return, so she takes them when she can. This year she had the chance to change not only her job but also her residency as she took a position in Paris as a senior financial analyst for Disneyland Paris corporate business planning group.
As a foreign exchange student thousands of miles from home, Thomas Hung didn’t realize living in Utah would put his future career in finance on the fast track.
Good communicators are supposed to work behind the scenes, but sometimes they can't help getting pulled on stage.
Mike Bond specializes in seeing eye to eye with people. Although his original plan in college was to become an optometrist, his focus shifted to business, and he hasn’t looked back.
The old adage “He that travels far knows much” is an apt description for one Marriott School grad. Jeff Strong earned his undergraduate degree in business from the Marriott School in 1988 and hasn’t stopped learning or traveling since.