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Alumni Spotlight Student Experiences 2000–2004
Typically, a publisher screaming at an author over the phone would be considered an unpleasant experience, but in Kerry Patterson’s case, it was just the opposite.
Juggling should be left to professional jugglers, who can sustain objects in air for periods of time. Those who aren’t professional jugglers should work on balancing their lives, instead of juggling them. That’s the philosophy behind Beyond Juggling: Rebalancing Your Busy Life, written by Kurt Sandholtz, Brooklyn Derr, Kathy Buckner, and Dawn Carlson.
For Jeremy Hanks, being an entrepreneur comes naturally. Even though he’s the founder of a successful dot-com company, that doesn’t keep him from thinking about other possible business ventures. “Right now I have ten different ideas of companies I’d like to start that I think would do well,” he says.
Sometimes serious cramming sessions do pay off. Upon graduating with his MAcc, R. Marcus Young took a consulting job in Portland, Oregon. When CPA exam season came, he wasn’t even sure he was going to take it until his brother-in-law convinced him to.
Handling clients whose net worth averages $50 million each day is part of Robert Haynie’s job as a principal and Pacific Northwest area leader of Ernst & Young’s advisory practice. Excelling at his job earned him a spot as one of Worth’s 250 top financial advisors in the magazine’s July/August 2002 issue.
Three teams with Brigham Young University students finished first, second and third at the University of Utah Entrepreneurial Challenge. Tropi-Cool, SilentWhistle.com and The Mayan Tree beat out seven other finalists to claim prizes at the April competition. Tropi-Cool, a company specializing in Mexican ice cream treats, won $40,000 for their first-place finish.
Superoots USA captured first place at Brigham Young University’s nationally recognized business plan competition April 2. Brant Walker, owner and president of Superoots USA, beat out two other finalists to claim this year’s title with his plan to manufacture and distribute Air-Pot plant containers. The team won $25,000 in cash and $25,000 in in-kind support services for their business. In addition to winning the business plan competition, Walker was named BYU Student Entrepreneur of the Year in 2003.
If a company’s name ever had meaning, it’s Phoenix Footwear Group, Inc. The name stems from the ancient Greek myth of the phoenix rising from the ashes—something the Old Town, Maine, company can relate to.
Several years ago, Sarah Sandberg watched a television program about one-hundred-year-old people. “I got two things out of it—take good care of your teeth, and take the risks,” she said. “I didn’t want to turn one hundred and wish I had taken more risks.”
Lorin Killian and his wife, Lindsay, decided on ten days’ notice—just a week before his graduation from the Marriott School—to move to New York City. Killian felt uneasy about declining a job offer in Salt Lake City to move to New York without any job leads. “I was told countless times during my Marriott School MPA days that networking was crucial in all aspects of business,” Killian said. Out of desperation, he sent emails to his network of friends and acquaintances in the Manhattan area.
The Marriott School at Brigham Young University announces ten MBA candidates as its 2004 Hawes Scholars. The honor, which carries a cash award of $10,000, is the highest distinction given to MBA students at the school.
A Marriott School undergraduate team recently placed first and a graduate team placed second at the national Deloitte Tax Case Study Competition—beating out other top accounting schools including University of Texas at Austin, University of Illinois and University of Georgia. For the seventh time in the twelve-year history of the competition, both Marriott School teams placed among the top three in the graduate and undergraduate division—an unparalleled accomplishment.
MBA Students Win Thunderbird Innovation Challenge
In an economy characterized by receding retirement funds and a volatile stock market, a group of BYU MBA students beat the odds – and 18 other universities - to earn a 32 percent return on their portfolio. Sponsors of the competition, brokerage firm D.A. Davidson & Co., awarded the Marriott School's Peery Institute with a $7,000 check for successfully managing the company's $50,000 investment portfolio throughout last year.
The alignment of paddle strokes, says David Hanna, is a key component of a successful rafting team. “On the river, the consequence of misaligned members is known immediately—the boat moves to the left or to the right rather than in a straight line,” he said. In the business world, the consequences of misaligned members are not so obvious, but just as harmful in terms of goal achievement, Hanna said.
Leaping from third to first, this analyst’s bullishness throughout last year was distinctly rewarded. Ted A. Izatt was recognized by Institutional Investor magazine as the No. 1 All-American fixed income analyst for energy. Izatt, senior vice president of Lehman Brothers, Inc., is responsible for credit research coverage of oil and gas on a global basis. He joined the company’s fixed income research department in July 1997.
Kristina Khona may not have children yet, but she probably knows more about baby clothes than most parents. “It’s my job,” she says. Khona is a buyer of infant and newborn clothing for Hecht’s and Strawbridge’s, department stores located in the Eastern region of the United States. Hecht’s and Strawbridge’s—the largest division of the May Department Stores Company—owns and operates eighty department stores in eighteen markets including Washington, D.C., Philadelphia, Baltimore, Norfolk, and Richmond.
Krescent Hancock’s daily commute to Foggy Bottom via the metro’s blue line hasn’t gotten old yet. In fact, “each day is a new adventure,” she says.
A class of Marriott School students has established the university’s first-ever endowed scholarship funded by a single class. With the help of matching contributions from the BYU Annual Fund campaign, the students contributed enough to form a scholarship endowment of $30,000.
Students from the Marriott School of Management at Brigham Young University helped successfully launch the Pete Suazo Business Center, Salt Lake City’s newest business support facility for Utah’s Hispanic and underserved communities.
Peter Christensen launched his writing career as an undergrad working for The Daily Universe. He was promoted from sports reporter to editor and then to editor-in-chief filling numerous other positions while on staff. "If I had my druthers, I might have ended up being a sports writer," Christensen said.
When Rob Smoot earned his MBA from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, he wanted to shout it from the mountaintops. Smoot celebrated the culmination of his education by leading forty fellow students to Africa's highest point the peak of Mount Kilimanjaro 19,341 feet above the vast African plains.
Intel business analyst Jason Packham said there might be a correlation between his winnings on ABC's Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? and his BYU education. One question asked on the show was, "In which of these languages is the first-person singular subject pronoun always capitalized?" Packham gave the correct answer: English.