Paul E. Gilbert recently assumed responsibility as president of the BYU Alumni Association for a term that will extend through the 199899 academic year. President-elect of the Alumni Association is Diana H. Peterson of Salt Lake City.
Gilbert graduated cum laude from BYU in 1968 with a BS in history and served as student body president. He had attended Brigham Young Elementary and Junior High Schools and BY High School. While at the Boalt Hall Law School, University of California, Berkeley, he earned a juris doctorate degree and was note and comment editor of the California Law Review.
Gilbert is a founding partner of the Beus, Gilbert, & Morrill law firm in Phoenix. In addition, he has taught at the J. Reuben Clark Law School at BYU.
Highly involved with the Alumni Association, he served as chair of the Phoenix regional chapter and in 1991 joined the alumni board of directors, serving as chair of the regional activities council and as a member of the executive committee. He recently finished a two-year term as president-elect of the association.
Active in community affairs, Gilbert chaired a $1.6 million fund-raising campaign for the Desert Mission Food Bank. He currently serves as chair of the board of directors of the Arizona chapter of the National Association of Christians and Jews.
He and his wife, Susan, are the parents of four children, three of whom have attended Brigham Young University.
Diana Peterson is a 1972 magna cum laude graduate of BYU with a BA in French. A National Merit and a Karl G. Maeser scholar, she was a member of the A Cappella Choir at the university. She pursued graduate studies at the University of Texas at Dallas.
A homemaker and accomplished musician, she was chosen to perform on the piano in a Church-sponsored Legacy Concert in Dallas and has presented concerts with her five sisters where she performed vocally and on piano and violin.
Involved with the Alumni Association board of directors since 1993, she has served as chair of the alumni programs council, overseeing Aspen Grove Family Camp, the Emeritus Association, and the Student Alumni Association. She also serves as a member of the executive committee of the board.
Peterson is also active in community and school initiatives, having served as a member of the Dallas Civic Opera women’s board as well as the Junior League of Palo Alto’s Adopt-a-School committee. A substitute teacher at the Waterford School, she serves on the advisory council of the school’s parents association.
She and her husband, Joel, are the parents of seven children, two of whom are graduates of BYU.
