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Alumni Spotlight MBA 2020 2000–2004
America’s Founding Fathers may have been an inspired bunch who forever changed the world, but they definitely aren’t known for diversity.
Few people can walk into a store and pick up an item off the shelf that they helped create. Jason Alleger, an MBA alumnus from the BYU Marriott School of Business, can.

While most people may see COVID-19 as a setback, Ruchika Goel, a recent BYU Marriott MBA program alum, saw the pandemic as the universe telling her to start a company.

You don’t meet a lot of people who can introduce themselves as inventors, but as the holder of sixty patents, Marty Rasmussen certainly can. He’s also a real estate developer, business manager, and “serial entrepreneur.” At age twenty-two, Rasmussen started his first venture with an objective befitting an inventor’s company: “We take ideas, develop them, put them into production, and market them on a national scale,” says Rasmussen.
When BYU Marriott MBA alum George Simons discovered the difficulty of sending legal documents through the mail, he decided to make a difference and find a better solution.

In September 2019, the Alps produced a plethora of mushrooms—more than Greg Witt has ever seen. You tend to notice things like that when you spend most of your summers hiking through the Swiss landscape.
BYU Marriott alum and former Eccles scholar Colin Ludlow created his own career opportunities and followed his passion for international business first to Japan and then to Malaysia.

Using experience and lessons from his own success, BYU Marriott EMBA alum Reed Quinn hopes that he can be a business leadership example to future entrepreneurs.

Whether she's planning cultural activities for tourists or consulting for companies in American Samoa, the path of BYU Marriott EMBA alumna Noelani Wayas has taken exciting twists and turns.

A life with challenges and opportunities has pushed BYU Marriott alumna Lisa Bateman Quist out of her comfort zone to become an advocate for women in business.

Most MBA students hope to graduate from the program with one or two prestigious internships under their belts and then begin their careers in the business field. BYU Marriott MBA alum Thayne O’Brien chose a different route. While an MBA student, O’Brien worked in Grand Teton National Park during the summers. As he neared the end of his MBA program in 1971, he realized the skills he’d learned at BYU Marriott could be used outside of the traditional business field.
Whether BYU Marriott alumna Kylie Chenn is making three pointers, writing songs, or jumping into the freezing ocean off the coast of Antarctica, she puts her whole heart into everything she does.
Bill Aho’s quest to make watching movies less offensive has not only caught national media attention but also landed him in the political and legal spotlight.
In the last decade, alum Steven Schone has led a business that started as a lone specialty T-shirt kiosk in Salt Lake’s Fashion Place Mall into an operation of fifty stores throughout North America.
When John McKinney graduated with his MBA last August, he wasn’t the only member of his family walking across the stage. He was joined by his wife, April, who earned her BS in community health, and their son, Collin, who earned his MA in Spanish literature. Then, one week after their graduation, John and April began serving a two-year mission for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, working for the Perpetual Education Fund (PEF). President Gordon B. Hinckley announced the PEF in 2001. In a January 2004 Ensign article, Elder John K. Carmack says the PEF was designed to “provide loans to help worthy returned missionaries and other young Latter-day Saint adults gain the training and education necessary for adequate employment in their own countries.”
Soon after Arturo Leon graduated with his MOB from the Marriott School, he found himself on the hot seat, being grilled by the president of the Mexican senate.
MBA grad Candice Wong (Lau, Siu Kuen) is second-in-command at a large Hong Kong jewelry company, and the road to this position was paved with self-discipline, hard work, ana strong sense of leadership.
For some entrepreneurs, inspiration hits in an airport terminal, conference room, or classroom. For Mike Robson, the conversation that put him on the path to his business happened at Burger King.
Students in the MBA Marketing Association organized a networking trip to Portland, Oregon, and Seattle last January. They met with companies in the area and with the Puget Sound chapter of the Management Society.
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.”
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.
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.
For Wyman Roberts, vacationing at Universal Studios proved to be so much fun that he decided to land a career in the industry. Roberts has been appointed executive vice president of marketing—chief marketing officer—for Universal Studios Recreation Group.