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The Utah Governor’s Mansion was blanketed in soft, blue light. The occasion was World Autism Awareness Day 2014, and buildings across the country were swapping bulbs to highlight a disorder that affects one in sixty-eight American children.
I keenly remember sitting in my basement apartment in Utah and reviewing with my wife our meager student finances. Given the recent birth of our first son and my heavy academic load, I could only afford to work part time. Even with our combined efforts, money was very tight for my wife and me. We were incredibly grateful for the low tuition, the scholarships, and the financial aid which allowed me to receive such an outstanding degree, and we committed to someday give back what had generously been given to us.
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.
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.”
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.
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.
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.
Jeff Holdaway, a 1982 finance graduate, knew there was a way for him to combine his passion for business and law. After graduating from Columbia Law School in 1985 and working at a national law firm, an opportunity arose that he couldn’t turn down. Twenty-four years later Holdaway is still glad he jumped at the chance to work at Marriott International.
Wally works at Wal-Mart. It may sound like a tongue twister, but Wally Potts’s story is all business. In a little more than two years, Potts has brought in millions of dollars of revenue for the corporation.
In an ever-expanding digital universe, Brad Rencher and his team at Adobe Systems Inc. navigate the Cloud like rocket men.
On the cutting edge of research and education, Jeff Jenkins is leading the pack. A 2009 master of information systems graduate, Jenkins is now finishing up a doctoral program at the University of Arizona and is set to graduate this spring.
Gregory Cornell has had a front row seat to history. After graduating from BYU in finance in 1985, he joined the U.S. Army and served his first four years in Germany at the end of the Cold War.
While many business leaders strive to expand their organization’s reach globally, one Marriott School grad oversees projects that have a more vertical approach—out of this atmosphere, actually.
While California gets much of the attention for up-and-coming technology news, Utah’s own “Silicon Slopes” feature many companies making headlines in the tech world.