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Alumni Spotlight Business Management 2020 2000–2004
Just before heading to the University of Iowa to join the university’s swim team, John Fellows discovered a copy of the Book of Mormon on a bookshelf in his parents’ home in Boise, Idaho. He packed it in his bags, and before long he called the missionaries wanting to know more. The combination of his baptism into The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and a swimming-prohibitive injury led him to transfer to BYU, where he joined the Army ROTC and discovered what would become his lifelong career.
Almost every May, between four hundred and seven hundred people, attend a Norwegian Constitution Day celebration at the International Peace Gardens in Salt Lake City and enjoy traditional Norwegian lefse flatbread and Solo orange soda. For more than a decade, the chair of the event’s committee has been 1995 business management grad Steve Affleck, who doesn’t have even a bit of Norwegian ancestry.
Hearing a mix of languages was commonplace for Everet Bluth, who grew up speaking both Spanish and English on his family’s farm in a Latter-day Saint settlement in northern Mexico. Life at home, Bluth says, “evolved around family, church, work on the farm, school, and sports.” He says he had a typical childhood—except that he started driving farm equipment when he was eight.
While Donald Trump was making Omarosa and Kwame household names last spring, one Denver radio station was making Marriott School alumna and entrepreneur Becky Tate Orser its apprentice.
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.
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.
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.
Manhattan Investment Banker Credits BYU Scholarships For Career Success For someone who always wanted to be a doctor, a position as vice president of JP Morgan Chase & Co., wasn’t exactly what investment banker Katherine Lum had in mind. She lives and works in Manhattan and is responsible for assisting clients in raising debt securities in the private placement market. Depending on the flow of deals, Lum has been known to work up to twenty-hour days. What keeps her motivated? “I truly enjoy my job,” she said.