News Releases 

Ten years after graduating from the School of Accountancy (SOA) at the BYU Marriott School of Business, Penny Lundgren waited, exhausted but exhilarated, to receive her first-place medal for the 1993 Jeep National Championship for mountain biking. Despite several literal bumps on the road, Lundgren pushed through to the finish line. Since that experience, Lundgren firmly believes that she can accomplish anything with enough practice and determination.

As an underdog in the world of singing, BYU Marriott School of Business alum Jake Hunsaker never imagined that his determination to perfect his musical talents would lead him to share the stage with world-famous musicians or compete against groups such as Pentatonix on national television. The same work ethic that brought Hunsaker to NBC’s The Sing Off has since shaped his life and career as an HR professional.

After a fulfilling career in the United States Air Force, Major Dan McCombs is finishing his last few years in the military as an ROTC instructor for the Air Force ROTC at the BYU Marriott School of Business. He hopes to pass on to the cadets whom he teaches a legacy of finding the good in each situation while sacrificing for their country.

For many students at the BYU Marriott School of Business, recruiting season is a crazy time of trying to balance schoolwork with networking and interviews. Lillian Barton, a BYU Marriott MBA student, navigated all of that during the final weeks of her pregnancy with her second child. In fact, she received job offers in the days immediately before and following his birth. Whether Barton is choosing where to complete an internship or studying for her classes at BYU Marriott, she sees every day as an opportunity to learn and grow.

An all-women team of students from the MBA program at the BYU Marriott School of Business took first place at the Utah Venture Capital Case Competition on 18 November 2020. As part of the competition, students sourced a deal with a company that helps entrepreneurs build mobile apps, gaining skills that will help them build their future careers.

Within of a year of graduating from the BYU Marriott School of Business, Luisa Chil helped build a company from the ground up. Now working at a digital marketing agency in Chicago, Chil uses her past growth experiences and lessons she has learned to help her succeed in her career and give back to her community.

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

Identifying a fellow BYU student or alumni out in the world is often easy, especially if you can spot Cougar merchandise, from sweatshirts to baseball caps to car decals. For information systems (IS) students from the BYU Marriott School of Business, in addition to wearing their BYU Cougars gear, there's something else that helps them recognize not only other IS students but also their fellow graduates—the hexagon-shaped stickers unique to the IS program.

A common theme throughout Joseph van Scheltema’s life is to carry on—through coping with family tragedy, supporting his family as a student, and traveling through a global pandemic. But he doesn’t only carry on for himself. As an MBA student, Van Scheltema hopes his education at the BYU Marriott School of Business will help him reach out and help others as well.

Whether he is coursing down river rapids in a raft, hiking through the majestic red rocks of Southern Utah, or zipping through the mountains on his mountain bike, Mark Widmer loves being outdoors. Now, as a professor of experience design and management at the BYU Marriott School of Business, he finds ways to combine his love of wilderness exploration with the principles of experience design.

On 1 October 2020, BYU Marriott School of Business global supply chain management (GSCM) alumni, students, and faculty gathered together for their first-ever virtual alumni conference. During the event, a record-breaking number of alumni and students learned from and reconnected with one another from places across the country.

Beginning in fall 2021, the BYU Marriott School of Business MBA program will offer a new specialization: Management Science and Quantitative Methods—STEM Management. The STEM management specialization will be available to all MBA students, regardless of their chosen tracks of study, and will better prepare them for the workforce with specialized skills and a competitive advantage.  

Each tree has different needs in an orchard. Each member has different needs in a community. Ralph Clegg, executive director of the Utah County Health Department, self-avowed gentleman farmer, and BYU Marriott School of Business EMPA alumni, solves problems in both his garden and his community by understanding diversity.

Marc Dotson, a BYU Marriott School of Business assistant professor of marketing, ventured through various fields of study, including journalism, political science, and international political economy, before discovering how marketing could be used to fulfill his aspiration of helping people make better decisions.

Whenever she courses down a turbulent river filled with rapids and obstacles, Bonnie McDougal embraces the overwhelming rush of adrenaline and the feeling of being disconnected from everyday life. However, when she’s back on dry ground, McDougal reconnects to the world and uses her expertise in technology to serve others as an information systems (IS) senior at the BYU Marriott School of Business.

A self-proclaimed "learntrepreneur," Taylor Halverson values two things in his career more than anything else: learning and entrepreneurship. As a professor of entrepreneurship at the BYU Marriott School of Business and the mentoring coordinator for BYU Marriott's Rollins Center for Entrepreneurship and Technology, Halverson encourages students to also become learntrepreneurs.

Ten years after serving a mission in Brazil, BYU Marriott's School of Accountancy 1989 graduate Stephen Oldham and his wife, Janae, found themselves standing on the doorstep of a family he had met and loved as a missionary. In that moment, Oldham felt the same comfortable familiarity he'd come to associate with this beautiful country—a feeling of coming home.

If you know Austin Henline, a senior in the strategy program at the BYU Marriott School of Business, then you know you can’t think about him without having the word “connection” come to mind. During his time as a student, Henline has gathered and shared a wealth of knowledge on ways that college students can optimize their use of LinkedIn to connect with employers and recruiters alike. Beyond linking up with those online, Henline also makes an effort to connect with his fellow BYU Marriott students in the classroom.

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.  

Two BYU Marriott School of Business MPA students received the Doyle W. Buckwalter Award for their outstanding internship performance during 2020. The winners, Marieka Creek and Zachary Simons, each received $2,000.