“Back in better times, before this dreadful COVID-19 pandemic,” said Brigham Griffin, marketing professional in residence, “I had the great privilege of accompanying six students from the UVU Marketing club as we attended the Western Regional AMA Conference Sales Competition sponsored by the UNLV AMA Chapter.

This regional competition offered the opportunity for students to sharpen their skills in sales and marketing-strategy in a competitive environment. It also provided a venue to network with local business professionals from the Las Vegas area, and marketing peers and faculty from around the country. 

Representing UVU at the UNLV competition were UVU Marketing club members Austin Bogle, Kyle Southwick, Valentyna Kyzym, Jeremy Carter, Joshua Joseph, and Kendyl Jolley. They did a fantastic job, coming away with many awards. They were also all extremely well behaved and professional, and great representatives of the UVU community.

Kyle Southwick represented us in the sales competition and placed 3rd overall. Joshua Joseph was outstanding at the conference and won the individual Marketing Strategy Competition (which is a similar format to the Marketing Strategy competition held at the AMA International Collegiate Conference). Our social media team of Austin Bogle, Valentyna Kyzym, and Joshua Joseph, also placed in the top three in the Digital Branding Competition – which was a social media strategy-based competition that is designed to allow students to combine their marketing, analytic, and creative skills to reposition a current brand using competitive data.

UVU students almost completely swept the Perfect Pitch competition, which is an elevator speech competition, and provided students an opportunity to introduce themselves in a captivating way and explain why you should hire them. Valentyna Kyzym placed third, and Joshua Joseph won the competition.”

“I am tremendously proud of these hard-working students and their faculty coach, Brigham Griffin,” said Dean Norm Wright. “It is in these kinds of experiences, I find, that lifelong bonds are forged as students and faculty work together to represent the University.”

“Besides the opportunity to compete, perhaps more importantly,” said Griffin, “it was also just a really fun and memorable trip for the students who attended. They were able to make some very deep and lasting connections with the other marketing students on the competition team. We stayed at the Hilton Grand Vacations on the Las Vegas Strip with spacious accommodations, and each suite had a full kitchen and dining room. We ate out at the Rainforest Cafe one night, which was a first for most of the students, but most mealtimes we just cooked or BBQed together and enjoyed home-cooked meals in our suite. A couple of them commented afterward that that trip was probably the most memorable thing they did at UVU.”