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Alumni Spotlight Accounting
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.
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.
Take one accounting alumna, add about fifty more women, one trip to Atlantic City, New Jersey, and what do you get? The Miss America Pageant.
Though she doesn’t have blonde pigtails, a lisp, or 1970s clothes, Cindy Brighton Andersen’s husband once confused her with Cindy Brady.
For the Driggs brothers running a business with relatives is not only a family affair, it’s something in their blood.
Alexis H. Johanson would never have guessed that an internship with a tractor company would lead her to a job more than two thousand miles from her home in Cedar Hills, Utah.
Whether he’s picking stocks or just choosing where to eat, Jonathan Waite knows how to do it right. The Wall Street Journal named Waite, who earned his BS in accountancy from the Marriott School, the number one restaurant analyst in their 2004 Best on the Street survey.
When Sherman Doll, Jay Wirig, and Steve Leininger graduated from the MAcc program in 1979 and 1980, they never guessed that just a few years later they would be together again as partners in an accounting firm. They attribute their longtime friendship and professional success to their Marriott School training and something they call “The Seven O’Clock Club.”
Somewhere amongst the clouds of his childhood dreams of becoming a private pilot, Mark H. Taylor bumped into the notion of accounting, which brought his feet right back to the ground. But that hasn’t stopped him from rising above the rest to land an academic fellowship at the United States Securities and Exchange Commission.
It’s not every day you reach into your mailbox and see your face staring back at you from a magazine cover. Marriott School alumnus Brian Mower says this is one of many surprises hard-working BYU graduates may see from the professional world.
With three Super Bowl wins, two USFL championships, two Holiday Bowl wins, and five Pro Bowls under his belt, former Cougar center Bart Oates is an accomplished offensive lineman. He’s reached almost every peak, but it’s his combination of success on and off the field that makes him truly extraordinary.
The twenty-six-plus miles that form the modern marathon originate from the Greek legend of a messenger who was sent that distance from the city of Marathon to Athens and subsequently died of exhaustion. As legend would dictate, the race is supposed to be tough.
In today's global marketplace, the business world can be dangerous. But for Marriott School alumnus Jared Benedict, few things are more dangerous than canyoning amidst a series of streams, lakes, and waterfalls in the Patagonia region of Chile.’
Tinker Bell sprinkles her pixie dust, Mickey and his pals stand ready, and everything is in place for another magical day at the happiest place on earth. But this day at Walt Disney World promises to be a little different.
According to the Bureau of Labor and Statistics, employees stay at their jobs for an average of 4.1 years. Like most people, Dennis Malloy never expected to stay at his first auditing firm for more than a few years, let alone thirty, but he found his niche at KPMG and never left.
The idea had always glowed—however faintly—in the back of Steve Oldham’s mind. He jokes about it now, saying that just like every other missionary who returns from Brazil, he came home with dreams of starting his own Brazilian steakhouse.
Sumptuous. Decadent. Delightful.  Few words could more adequately describe a box of Lula’s Chocolates. Neatly perched inside each mahogany-colored package await aromatic round crèmes, salted caramels, square truffles, and nuts cloaked with melt-in-your-mouth cocoa. 
A world away from his home in Utah, 1989 master of accountancy graduate Phillip Hutchings is climbing a ladder to global success and sharing his knowledge with Marriott School students.
Chances are the origins of your morning omelet were influenced by a BYU grad. After all, Craig Willardson oversees twenty-five million laying hens and is doing all he can for the incredible, edible egg.
It takes a special kind of person to compare his job to a high school field trip and enjoy it. Such is the case for 1997 masters of accounting graduate Travis Nielsen, whose consulting firm has him on the road every dayyellow school bus not included.
Whether it’s the crisp binding of a book straight off the press or the vibrant design of an e-book, 1999 MAcc graduate Brad Farmer loves all aspects of his job in the publishing industry.
When Sandy Wight earned a MAcc in 1990 and started her career with Arthur Andersen, she had no idea she would become a partner. “My goal was to get a job and have two years of experience on my résumé,” she says. Twenty years later Wight is still gaining experience for her résumé—as a partner in the human capital practice of Ernst & Young.
“Citius! Altius! Fortius!” Heralding the commencement of the 2002 Winter Olympics, the 360-member Mormon Tabernacle Choir reverberated John Williams’s “Call of the Champions” across Rice-Eccles Stadium.
For Martissa Spencer, patience is definitely a virtue. When Martissa met her now-husband Mike in September 1991, she was busy having her first real romance with the newly returned missionary she had dated in high school. Martissa had plans to serve a mission of her own and was surprised to find out that her boyfriend wasn’t willing to wait. The relationship ended. “I couldn’t change my course,” Martissa says. “I felt very strongly about serving a mission.”