Finance News 

Nine students at the BYU Marriott School of Business were recently honored as 2022 Bateman Award recipients for their excellence both inside and outside the classroom. The annual award, named for Merrill J. Bateman, allows each undergraduate program at BYU Marriott to select a 2021–22 academic year senior for recognition.

As a child, Kami Mak grew up with limited finances, and her family was unaware of the resources available to help their financial situation. Wanting to ensure greater financial freedom and stability for her future, Mak decided to learn as much as she could about money management and budgeting. Through the help of a mentor, this BYU Marriott School of Business senior grew from a financial novice to an up-and-coming expert now working as a financial analyst intern at a multinational technology company.  

Taking risks may be a challenge for many, but for Saira Aslam risk-taking comes naturally. As a 2015 finance graduate, Aslam’s journey to success began when she moved more than 7,500 miles to study at the BYU Marriott School of Business. After graduating and working in several corporate finance positions, she has learned that the secret to success, both in life and in finance, is found through navigating opportunities that possess potential risk.  

A day of work for BYU Marriott School of Business alum Tanner Clawson might look different than what most people assume someone in “business” does. Through the Ballard Center for Social Impact at BYU Marriott, Clawson’s career in business has led him across the globe, helping with projects that are solving pressing social issues.

The Brigham Young University Marriott School of Business welcomes nine new professors this fall.

Every fall, recruiters from finance firms around the country descend on the BYU Marriott School of Business in hopes of finding their newest interns and future full-time hires. In order to help students prepare for this recruiting process, the Department of Finance offers a unique class: Finance 180: Finance Recruitment Prep Series. The annual winter semester course focuses on giving pre-business students who are interested in the finance program the necessary skills to connect with recruiters, along with exposing students to the different fields within finance so they know which direction to take their careers.

In 1984, a young Colby Wright watched the BYU football team win the national championship after beating the University of Michigan in the Holiday Bowl. Watching the team’s improbable run to the top proved to be an inspiring catalyst in Wright’s life as he later attended BYU. Years later, Wright is now back at BYU as a professor of finance at the BYU Marriott School of Business, though not because of his love for the football team, but because of the exceptional students he works with on a regular basis. He is also grateful for the character principles BYU Marriott is built on, which he strives to live by running a nonprofit for higher education in the Philippines.

BYU Marriott School of Business alum Wes Whitman owns his own real estate private equity firm and has an MBA from Harvard, achievements the 2003 finance graduate credits to the foundational experiences he had at BYU Marriott. His education as an undergraduate prepared him for accomplishments throughout his life and allows him to now give back to the school that helped set his career in motion. After succeeding in real estate, he now works to helps students strengthen their knowledge of real estate career paths and create connections with the BYU Marriott alumni network.

Teamwork is an important part of any business, whether on a small hay farm or in a large hospital. For Preston Willey, a BYU Marriott School of Business finance senior from Midway, Utah, the benefits of teamwork are personal because medical teams helped him beat cancer. Now he is striving to give back by connecting the principles learned from a childhood job to the classroom and the medical field.

During his free time, Alex Kim can often be found in a field playing soccer with his friends. When he’s not dribbling a soccer ball, he’s either finishing finance homework, studying for tests, working at his internship, or teaching international students how to network. Though Kim may seem busy, he wants to make the most of his experience in the United States and his education at the BYU Marriott School of Business.

Every year, each department in the BYU Marriott School of Business selects one outstanding student to receive the Bateman Award, which recognizes excellence both inside and outside the classroom. The award is named after Merrill J. Bateman, who served as the dean of BYU Marriott from 1975–79 and the president of BYU from 1996–2003. 

Perseverance is no stranger to Chris Call—especially when outdoor pastimes are involved. The lessons Call learned from activities such as road cycling and skiing have helped him find his niche in the business world and reach out to his peers at the BYU Marriott School of Business. 

The Denny L. and Jerri Brown Professor of Finance at BYU Marriott, Hal Heaton has become well-known for his rigorous method of challenging students’ case study positions by asking them to defend their logic. Heaton hopes the lessons that students learn from his teaching method help prepare them as they enter the workforce and compete in business with professionals from all over the world.

While most kids played football or baseball after school, Barrett Slade saddled and rode horses six days a week. All those years ago he never imagined that his persistence would bring him to where he is today, as the James M. Passey Professor of Finance at the BYU Marriott School of Business.

Since 1935, people have been playing Hasbro’s Monopoly or The Game of Life board games, where players make decisions about how to best invest their hard-earned tokens and game currency to win the game. But for students involved in the Silver Fund, an investment class at the BYU Marriott School of Business, there’s no need for Monopoly money or investment games. Every semester, these students in the Silver Fund walk the walk by managing more than three million dollars of real stock investments through trading stocks.

Living in a foreign country halfway across the world can be daunting. Some people who choose to live abroad often learn to speak a foreign language and adapt to a new culture; such challenges didn’t stop Joy Shu from pursuing her dream to work in business and attend the BYU Marriott School of Business—an experience that became possible because of an alumni network that reached all the way to China.

The Brigham Young University Marriott School of Business welcomed six new professors for the Fall 2020 semester.

When Jack Abumanneh first landed in the United States on 24 August 2017, three days after his seventeenth birthday, he had packed all his belongings into a single suitcase and backpack. After taking the shuttle from the Salt Lake City airport to the dorms at Brigham Young University in Provo, he turned to the student sitting at the check-in desk and asked, “What do I do next?” Since arriving at BYU just over three years ago, Abumanneh has found answers to that question. Now as a senior in the finance program at the BYU Marriott School of Business, Abumanneh reflects on his time at BYU with gratitude and looks forward to a bright future.  

Instead of filling hundreds of chairs in an auditorium on campus, faces of real estate professionals from across the country and BYU students filled hundreds of thumbnail-sized screens as they joined together to attend the inaugural 2020 BYU Global Real Estate Conference on 8–9 October. Hosted by the Department of Finance at the BYU Marriott School of Business, the conference was an opportunity to help create connections for students to build upon and begin their careers in real estate all over the world.

As in-person events that typically would have taken place in a lecture hall move online and to video conferences, students and alumni from the BYU Marriott School of Business are finding a silver lining to online events. The Department of Finance at BYU Marriott recently began hosting its Fall 2020 Real Estate Webinar Series with the first event held on 17 September.