Entrepreneurial Management News 

While a trolley bus system has not been used in Utah for 75 years, an antique bus will soon be gracing the streets of Provo thanks to BYU Marriott entrepreneurship senior Afton Ellis Long.

Since completing a social impact internship in Mexico City in 2012, Nathan Noble has charted a career path dedicated to serving others and helping people in need. The BYU Marriott School of Business entrepreneurship alumnus still feels the ripples of his foundational experiences during his time at BYU Marriott in his current efforts to reimagine and improve the lives of foster children.

Not long after Kim Scoville began teaching at the BYU Marriott School of Business, she noticed a need for legal knowledge in the school’s entrepreneurship program. As a graduate of BYU’s J. Rueben Clark Law School, Scoville has spent her career providing legal advice to startup companies. Her work experience prompted her to create an entrepreneurship class that focused on legal issues for BYU Marriott’s entrepreneurship students, many of whom own or plan to own businesses.

While entrepreneurship has been a lifelong goal for Nathan Miller, he did not fully commit to his dreams until listening to a guest speaker in one of his classes at the BYU Marriott School of Business. The speaker motivated Miller, who is now a senior, to overcome self-doubt and start a business that combines his education with his passion for the outdoors, resulting in winter apparel with a unique mission.

Cookies and ice cream are delicious by themselves, but they’re even better when paired together, at least according to two brothers from California. Blake Barkdull, an entrepreneurship junior at the BYU Marriott School of Business, has paired his knowledge gained in the classroom with real-life business experiences in his ice cream and cookies business, The Penguin Brothers.

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. 

When teaching his class ENT 401: Entrepreneurial Innovation to MBA students, associate professor of entrepreneurship Nile Hatch shares his own method of innovation: developing a deep understanding of others’ needs. With both management and engineering students in the class, Hatch also encourages his students to combine their strengths in teams and support one another’s needs.

BYU Marriott fared well in the recently released U.S. News & World Report 2022 rankings for graduate programs. Both the MBA and MPA programs were ranked, as were four graduate program emphases.

Whether students major in finance, English, or geology, they eventually need to find answers to problems they face throughout their careers. The entrepreneurship lecture series at the BYU Marriott School of Business helps students learn essential skills to innovate solutions that address the challenges that they will face at work, in their communities, and within their homes.

The career of Gibb Dyer has been one full of interesting twists and turns. From the red-brick streets of Massachusetts, along the deserts of Africa, and even to the next door of the lead singer of Led Zeppelin, Dyer has seen and learned much. Throughout all of his world travels, Dyer, the O. Leslie Stone Professor of Entrepreneurship at the BYU Marriott School of Business, teaches people how to create and build family businesses.

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.  

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

Case competitions test students’ business skills, work ethic, and stamina, but few people find that case competitions bring out their emotional side. However, Liz Dixon often sheds joyful tears as she watches her students present their solutions and find success at international case competitions. Through her work as an adjunct professor of management communications at the BYU Marriott School of Business, Dixon empowers students to excel in many different areas, and she loves seeing them succeed.

At sixteen years old, Brad Mills taught himself to design websites and started his own web design business. At the time, he just wanted to earn money to fund his future college education—but he did much more than that. Not only did this experience help Mills pay for his schooling, but it also became the inspiration that would lead him to a degree in entrepreneurship from the BYU Marriott School of Business and a fulfilling career building businesses and helping companies grow.

Many university students often work to balance their classwork with social fun and work responsibilities outside of school. However, BYU Marriott School of Business entrepreneurship senior Braiden Day juggles more responsibilities than the average university student. On top of school and full-time work, Day is also a father to four children, a two-year-old and newborn triplets.

Since graduating from the BYU Marriott School of Business in 2011, entrepreneurship alum Stephanie Schindler has driven through the streets of Manhattan, worked at a startup company in California, and recorded a podcast on the different ways that women balance motherhood and career. While her life has changed constantly since graduation, Schindler uses some of the creative problem-solving skills that she learned in the entrepreneurship program to tackle the challenges of every day. 

She might be dealing with a last-minute cancellation or organizing presentations while stuck at a Starbucks in a snowstorm, but Anne Sledd always finds creative ways to make things happen. In her role as a department assistant for the management department at the BYU Marriott School of Business, Sledd also serves as an on-the-spot events coordinator, with a goal of creating moments of connection for everyone associated with the school.

For those fortunate enough to own their own businesses, some are able to sell their companies and head straight into years of restful retirement. However, when Gary Williams, a teaching professor of entrepreneurship at the BYU Marriott School of Business, sold his company, he chose a different path. He decided to apply the skills he had learned as a businessman to create experiential learning opportunities for BYU Marriott students.

Socks that monitor a baby’s heart rate, home security cameras that alert homeowners via text messages, and doors that use an app to open for those who need assistance have more in common than one might think. They’re all projects that BYU students have tackled in the Crocker Innovation Fellowship program. The program, a joint effort between the BYU Marriott School of Business and other colleges across BYU campus, combines the strengths of students in business, engineering, computer science, and other programs to identify problems and to innovate solutions.

With a capacity of nearly 19,000 people, BYU’s Marriott Center can be an intimidating place to play a basketball game. As BYU’s basketball teams take on and defeat some of the best teams in the country, students hold up signs and fans cheer from all directions, pouring down deafening noise on opponents. Earlier this year, before COVID-19 closed down campus, BYU Marriott entrepreneurship senior Bradley Pilkington documented this scene for social media.