Karen Bybee (BA ’81) loves sports. After all, she spent her career helping organize global events ranging from FIFA World Cups to the Olympic Games. But her enthusiasm for those marquis events pales next to her passion for BYU. Bybee, the down-to-earth new president of the BYU Alumni Association, cares deeply for the university and its mission, and that love is rooted in her own student experience, which has reverberated through her life.
“BYU is where I made lifelong friends,” Bybee says. “I learned there what I wanted to do with public relations and had amazing opportunities to develop event and management skills while in student government. But it’s also where I learned how to get answers to my prayers and be inspired. I learned the value of serving others and got that personal revelation that I was to go on a mission. The combining of those things—the educational and spiritual—is why BYU is so unique and means so much to me.”
The aspect of faith in the BYU experience is critical in a time like this, Bybee feels. “Having a spiritual understanding and a long-range game plan allows our students to be flexible and adapt to unusual circumstances where their path forward looks different than the one they expected to take. I trust our students, but also I hope that our alumni, through the Alumni Association and tools like BYU Connect, will help mentor and support all of our new grads.”
