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Alumni Spotlight Employee Spotlight 2015
Lee Perry will deliver the Marriott School devotional address on Thursday, February 12 at 11 a.m. in W408 TNRB.
It reads like a worst-case scenario: you’re slicing through rough air to check on an offshore oil rig when the unfathomable happens—the chopper goes down. Would you survive?
Playing the part of butcher Lazar Wolf in Fiddler on the Roof came naturally to 1983 MPA alum Chris Miasnik: his last name is made up of the Russian occupational suffix and the word for meat. But there were a few other factors involved in landing the role of rejected suitor in the Bluffdale Arts Council production. “I was the oldest guy there, and I had the whitest beard,” he admits.
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.
By gaining the ear of the Canadian government, alum Ken Kyle helped snuff out the light of tobacco companies in his home country. And the effects of his work are still filtering across the world.
When Pat Harmer Bluth expressed an interest in mathematics and engineering, her brother responded, “Girls don’t major in math.”
Scott C. Johnson has been a Rollins Center for Entrepreneurship and Technology founder since 2011. Johnson grew up in Ogden, Utah, and despite receiving two scholarships to Brigham Young University, he attended Weber State. It wasn’t until Johnson served a mission in Brazil that he had a self-described “change of heart.” Johnson’s desire to teach at the MTC led him to transfer to BYU post-mission. He didn’t get the MTC job he was hoping for, but he met his wife, Kristen, and graduated from BYU with a degree in near eastern studies and a minor in business in 1994.
Noemi Morales, a native of Roswell, Georgia, started out as a photography major at BYU-Idaho. Although it took her a few years in Rexburg, an LDS mission to St. George, Utah; and lots of decisions, Morales has finally found her calling in the Marriott School’s recreation management program. She’s even landed an internship with a popular new company called Slide the City that puts on giant waterslide events across the country.
For OLS professor David Cherrington, arriving at his teaching career didn’t come as expected.
When the alarm clock blares on a workday morning, MBA academic program manager Christine Roundy is not one to grumble. “I don’t wake up and think ‘oh no, I have to go to work,’” she says. “I love coming to work; I’m excited to go.”
Here’s a challenge marketing professor Lee Daniels poses his students:
What if moving halfway around the world wasn’t a grand departure into the unknown but, rather, a return to the familiar?
“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.
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.
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.
Model rockets, toys, and board games. This isn’t a child’s wish list; it’s Myles Christensen’s résumé. The 2001 MBA grad and design engineer recently added one more fun item to his line-up—electric bikes. He’s connecting customers with electric bicycles and making many people happy in the process.
You don’t mess with a Texan’s pickup truck, says BYU finance professor Andrew Holmes. So, needless to say, back in the 90s when someone broke into his truck, stole his checkbook, and started writing fraudulent checks in his name, he was pretty upset.
Serving in the armed forces left Warren Price with deep emotional scars. He found hope in grad school and now wants to help others.
Bruce Money insists that the colorful flags lining the Tanner building’s atrium are not just for show. They represent the Marriott School’s dedication to international business. And as the director of the Global Management Center (GMC), Money takes that mission seriously.
Explosions, accidents, and disasters—surprisingly, that’s what motivated Peter Madsen to pursue a degree in management.
Being a soldier in the armed forces can be physically and emotionally demanding. As an army chaplain, MPA alum Lt. Col. Thomas Helms has been offering soldiers moral support and religious services for nearly two decades.
Eighteen weeks of training, 26.2 miles, an average heart rate of 136–there are many ways to measure a marathon.
MPA student Jeff Roberts discovered many things during his internship: the best ways to help people become self-reliant, his love of social innovation, and the power of a late-night pizza party.
Jeremy Sookhoo was looking for a meaningful career when he found impact investing.