Building His Own Future

PROVO, Utah – Jan 25, 2021 – Entrepreneurship alum Jordan Cushman’s career journey has involved plenty of building. While he was a student at the BYU Marriott School of Business, he built relationships that allowed him to find opportunities at Google and Pinterest. Now, years into his career, he’s building a Latin American sales team for Pinterest while also building a future in real estate investment.  

Cushman, who graduated in 2011, decided to come to BYU in part because of his interest in playing for the university’s soccer team. “I had opportunities to play soccer at other universities, but I wanted to come to BYU,” remembers Cushman. “At the time, the BYU men’s soccer team was in a semi-professional league, and I thought playing in that league would be fun.” Cushman played on the team for three years. He even traveled with the team to play games in places such as Fiji and Costa Rica.

Originally enrolled in the marketing program at BYU Marriott, Cushman ultimately found that entrepreneurship was a better fit for him. “I had always been drawn to building things and learning more about all areas of business. During my senior year, I realized there were a couple classes I wanted to take that didn't fit into the marketing emphasis,” he says. “When I met with my advisor, she allowed me to change my emphasis to entrepreneurship and submit a marketing class for one of the entrepreneurship classes. I basically built my own emphasis with the help of my advisor.”

While he graduated with an entrepreneurship-focused degree, Cushman was still interested in marketing. That interest was a driving force behind his participation in experiences that BYU Marriott had to offer, particularly his involvement in the BYU Marriott Marketing Association. “The focus of the marketing association was to help people get jobs and exposure to different industries,” Cushman says. “My time in that club was my first foray into interacting with successful leaders, such as those on the BYU Marriott marketing advisory board, and where I learned how to conduct myself professionally and how to ask for guidance and mentorship.”

Some of Cushman’s connections through his experiences at BYU Marriott and with the Marketing Association have played critical roles in helping him build his career in the tech industry. “Someone who had graduated before me and who I had kept in touch with ended up at Google and referred me for an interview there,” he says.  “After seven years at Google, another BYU Marriott alum reached out to me and invited me to join his sales team at Pinterest. I jumped at that opportunity and have been at Pinterest ever since.”

Working from his home in Kaysville, Utah, Cushman is currently building out the Latin American sales team for Pinterest. Even though he’s working for a company that’s already well established, he’s using his entrepreneurial skills to help the company build something new. “We don't currently have ads on Pinterest in Latin America, but we will have them early this year,” he says. “I learned to speak Portuguese during my mission in Brazil, which helped me be recruited to build this new team, and I've used some of my experience with the sales team in the United States to help set up this new sales team up for success.”

Cushman is also working to build personal assets as he invests in real estate with his brothers, researching and purchasing properties in the southeastern area of the United States to use as short-term rentals. “In my current job with Pinterest, I'm building a team to sell ads online, which feels intangible because these ads go up on the internet,” he says. “Real estate is fun in a different way because property is a tangible thing, and I can collaborate with my brothers to buy these short-term rental properties. I enjoy talking with my brothers and building a real estate portfolio with them.”

As Cushman continues in his career and his personal ventures, he will continue to build relationships and success for his employers. “I’ve always liked the idea of building business, whether I’m at a small start-up or an established company,” he says. “In the end, I always aspire to be with people who motivate and inspire me and solve problems that I feel like are worth solving.”