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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.
Throughout my life I’ve spent countless summer weekends at my parents’ cabin in the Uinta Mountains, where in the early days there was no electricity or indoor plumbing and almost every evening was spent playing games around the kitchen table until the generator would run out of gas.
Cameras flashed as reporters jostled for position. This was the biggest story of the year: Kenneth Lay was surrendering to the FBI. Slapped with a slew of charges alleging he falsified statements to hide billions in losses, Lay’s arrest marked the end of Enron’s empire.
Last August I was at a landfill site in So Paulo, Brazil. It had been a dump where people sorted through garbage looking for valuable items so they could put food on their tables.
“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.
Service must be the primary focus of those who seek a generous heart and blessed life, writes Sonia Clayton.
Alum Mirella Petersen is bold, organized, and driven—the perfect combination for getting autism insurance reform passed in Utah.
When Jackie Saumweber joined the BYU MPA program, she didn't know she would find her niche in corporate social responsibility.
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.”
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 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.
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.”
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.”
Every day our Marriott associates welcome three-quarters of a million people to one of our hotels around the world. Today I wanted to share with you our story and a few things I’ve learned about making the most of opportunities.
From the mid-level marketing manager to the partner in a top accounting firm, Marriott School grads agree on at least one thing: their first jobs mattered. Despite the mistakes and invariable snafus, most grads look back in awe at how much these first experiences shaped their future successes.
When the best time to talk with Jeff Strong is while he’s on his way to an airport, you know you’ve reached a busy person. Managing a full schedule is a responsibility that Strong may have mastered as well as anyone. For several years he was traveling nearly two hundred days a yearboth domestically and internationally—as global president and chief customer officer for Johnson & Johnson. “Looking back,” he says, “I don’t think anybody could have survived that time without being organized.”
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.
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.
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.
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.
How the Marriott School Is Helping Students Land Jobs and Internships