Every Tuesday at 11:05 a.m., students, faculty and staff head to the Marriott Center for the weekly Devotional or Forum address. BYU President Kevin J Worthen and his wife Peggy kick off the semester and are followed by BYU professors, members of the leadership of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and a range of industry leaders and political figures. Entertainment assemblies celebrating the talent of BYU Arts round out the semester schedule.
Devotional and Forums are open to the public and most are broadcast live on BYUtv, BYUtv.org (and archived for on-demand streaming), KBYU-TV 11, Classical 89 FM, BYU Radio and will be archived on speeches.byu.edu.
Winter 2017 Devotional and Forum Schedule
January
- January 10: President and Sister Worthen (Devotional)
- January 17: Brother Douglas D. Holmes, Young Men General Presidency, LDS Church (Devotional)
- January 24: Susan Cain, author and TED speaker (Forum)
- January 31: Craig Manning, BYU Athletics (Devotional)
February
- February 7: Elder Quentin L. Cook, Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, LDS Church (Devotional)
- February 14: Cassy Budd, BYU School of Accountancy (Devotional)
- February 28: Clayborne Carson, historian at Stanford University (Forum)
March
- March 7: Performance Assembly (Cougarettes, Noteworthy, Vocal Point and Young Ambassadors)
- March 14: Elder Weatherford T. Clayton, General Authority Seventy, LDS Church (Devotional)
- March 21: Doris Kearns-Goodwin, presidential historian and Pulitzer Prize-winning author (Forum)
- March 28: Keith Vorkink, BYU Marriott School of Management (Devotional)
April
- April 4: Erin Holmes, BYU School of Family Life (Devotional)
- April 11: Eric Gillett, BYU College of Fine Arts and Communications (Devotional)
- April 18: BYUSA's Unforum
About the Winter 2017 Devotional and Forum Speakers
BYU President Kevin J Worthen
January 5, 2016 Devotional
Kevin J Worthen began serving as the 13th president of Brigham Young University on May 1, 2014. He previously served as BYU's advancement vice president and as dean of its J. Reuben Clark Law School, where he is the Hugh W. Colton Professor of Law.
President Worthen was born in Dragerton (now East Carbon-Sunnyside), Utah, and grew up in nearby Price. After serving a mission for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Monterrey, Mexico, he earned an associate degree at the College of Eastern Utah (now USU Eastern). He then received his bachelor of arts in political science and his juris doctorate from BYU.
Following his graduation from the BYU Law School, President Worthen served as a law clerk to Judge Malcolm R. Wilkey of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit and Justice Byron R. White of the U.S. Supreme Court. After three years of private practice with the law firm of Jennings, Strouss & Salmon in Phoenix, Arizona, President Worthen joined the BYU Law School faculty in 1987. In 1994, he was a Fulbright Scholar at the University of Chile Law School in Santiago. He has published extensively on a number of legal topics, with particular emphasis on federal Indian law and the rights of indigenous peoples.
President Worthen currently serves as an area seventy in the Church of Jesus Christ. He previously served as a stake president, bishop, high councilor, and early-morning seminary instructor.
Peggy Worthen
January 10, 2017 Devotional
Peggy Sealey Worthen, born and raised in Price, Utah, is the second oldest of five children. She is married to Kevin J Worthen, current president of Brigham Young University.
While she was attending the College of Eastern Utah, she met Kevin Worthen at a Church dance and the two soon began dating. Although she grew up three blocks from Kevin and his family, their three-year age difference meant they never went to high school at the same time and didn't know each other well. In college, she began meeting with the missionaries of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and when she decided to be baptized, Kevin was able to baptize her. She and Kevin were married in the Provo Utah LDS Temple.
Early in their marriage, Worthen worked in a number of jobs to support their family as Kevin finished his education and started his career, including as a receptionist for U.S. Senator Jake Garn.
She was able to return to school when Kevin began teaching and graduated with a degree in English from BYU in 2003, the same year their oldest son graduated from high school. She has taken a number of courses since then, including two years of Norwegian.
Brother Douglas D. Holmes
Young Men General Presidency, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints
January 17, 2017 Devotional
Douglas D. Holmes was serving as a counselor in a stake presidency when he was sustained as the first counselor in the Young Men general presidency on April 4, 2015. His Church service includes president of the Michigan Detroit Mission, bishop, ward Young Men president, stake Young Men president’s counselor, Gospel Doctrine teacher, ward mission leader, bishop’s counselor, and elders quorum president.
He received a bachelor of arts degree in family science and an MBA in finance, both from Brigham Young University. He is self-employed as an investor and developer. He is married to Erin Sue Toone, and they are the parents of six children.
Susan Cain
The New York Times bestselling author and TED Speaker
January 24, 2017 Forum
Susan Cain is the co-founder of Quiet Revolution and the author of the bestsellers Quiet Power: The Secret Strengths of Introverts, and Quiet: The Power of Introverts in A World That Can’t Stop Talking, which has been translated into 40 languages, has been on the New York Times bestseller list for over four years, and was named the #1 best book of the year by Fast Company magazine, which also named Cain one of its Most Creative People in Business. Cain is also the co-founder of the Quiet Schools Network and the Quiet Leadership Institute. Her writing has appeared in the The New York Times, The Atlantic, The Wall Street Journal, and many other publications.
Her record-smashing TED talk has been viewed over 14 million times and was named by Bill Gates one of his all-time favorite talks. Cain has also spoken at Microsoft, Google, the U.S. Treasury, the S.E.C., Harvard, Yale, West Point and the US Naval Academy. She received Harvard Law School’s Celebration Award for Thought Leadership, the Toastmasters International Golden Gavel Award for Communication and Leadership, and was named one of the world’s top 50 Leadership and Management Experts by Inc. Magazine. She is an honors graduate of Princeton and Harvard Law School. She lives in the Hudson River Valley with her husband and two sons.
Craig Manning
BYU Athletics Mental Strength Coach
January 31, 2017 Devotional
Dr. Craig Manning is a performance psychology consultant. He is the author and founder of The Fearless Mind, as well as an adjunct Professor of Performance Psychology at Brigham Young University, where he also is a performance consultant for the university’s athletic department. His clients include the US Ski and US Snowboarding teams, Red Bull High Performance, and a roster of companies around the world.
Dr. Manning has played tennis at both the collegiate and professional levels. He has been a three-time Conference Coach of the Year at a Division 1 school while building it into a national Top 20 program, and he earned his Ph.D. at one of the elite doctoral programs in the country. Dr. Manning has experienced the highest level of performance from the perspective of player, coach and applied scientist. After more than 25 years of research and application in the field of human performance, Dr. Manning has found that the key to success in athletic, business or personal pursuits is the application of psychological skills. His methodology utilizes a scientific approach built around the natural laws of the mind to accelerate human performance.
Dr. Manning earned his bachelor's and master's degrees in Psychology from Brigham Young University, and a Doctorate in Sports Psychology from the University of Utah.
Elder Quentin L. Cook
Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints
February 7, 2017 Devotional
Elder Quentin L. Cook was sustained as a member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints on October 6, 2007. Called as a General Authority in April 1996, he served in the Second Quorum, the First Quorum, and the Presidency of the Seventy.
As a Seventy, he served in the Area Presidency in the Philippines, as president of the Pacific Islands and the North America Northwest Areas, and as Executive Director of the Missionary Department.
At the time of his call to be a General Authority of the Church, he was vice chairman of Sutter Health System. Previously, he was president and chief executive officer of a California health care system. Prior to that, he was a business lawyer and managing partner of a San Francisco Bay Area law firm. He has been a board member of several profit and not-for-profit corporations.
He has served the Church as a bishop, stake president and counselor in the San Francisco California Stake, and regional representative and Area Authority in the North America West Area. As a young man, he was a missionary in the British Mission.
He is a native of Logan, Utah, where he was born on September 8, 1940. He received a bachelor’s degree in political science from Utah State University and a Doctor of Jurisprudence from Stanford University.
He married Mary Gaddie on November 30, 1962. They are the parents of three children.
Cassy Budd
BYU School of Accountancy
February 14, 2017 Devotional
Cassy Budd is a Professor in BYU’s School of Accountancy and the President Elect of the Teaching, Learning and Curriculum section of the American Accounting Association. She was honored to receive the Marriott School Teaching Excellence Award in 2015. In addition to other teaching and curriculum related awards throughout her 15-year teaching career, Cassy has released a breakout track, “The Cash Flow Song,” which has reached over 8,000 views on YouTube and can be sung from memory by hundreds, if not thousands of former students. Prior to establishing a career as a college professor, Cassy worked for PricewaterhouseCoopers for more than a decade, which allows her to bring the real world into the classroom on a regular basis. Although accounting may sound like a boring subject to some, Cassy loves teaching it, and is committed to enlivening her classes with everything from paper airplanes to ukulele accompanied original songs.
Cassy met her husband, Spencer, more than 28 years ago in a Ballroom Dance class at BYU. In addition to being a fabulous husband and father, Spencer is a sculptor, a painter and a gymnastics instructor at BYU. Together, they regularly hold season tickets to BYU football and basketball as well as the BYU Arts Pass. They also attend other sporting and arts events throughout the year and enjoy supporting their students who participate in these activities. Cassy and Spencer have 4 amazing children (plus a son- and daughter-in-law) with whom they love to spend time hiking, biking, talking, singing, laughing and eating great food.
Clayborne Carson
Historian at Stanford University
February 28, 2017 Forum
Clayborne Carson has devoted his professional life to the study of Martin Luther King, Jr. and the movements King inspired. Since receiving his doctorate from UCLA in 1975, Dr. Carson has taught at Stanford University, where he is now Martin Luther King, Jr., Centennial Professor of History and Ronnie Lott Founding Director of the Martin Luther King, Jr., Research and Education Institute.
During his undergraduate years at UCLA, Dr. Carson participated in civil rights and antiwar protests, and many of his subsequent writings reflect his experiences by stressing the importance of grassroots political activity within the African-American freedom struggle. In 1985, the late Coretta Scott King invited Dr. Carson to direct a long-term project to edit and publish an authoritative edition of King's speeches, sermons, correspondence, publications, and unpublished writings. Under Carson’s direction, the King Papers Project has produced seven volumes of The Papers of Martin Luther King, Jr.In 2005 Carson founded the Martin Luther King, Jr. Research and Education Institute to endow and expand the work of the King Papers Project.
Elder Weatherford T. Clayton
General Authority Seventy, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints
March 14, 2017 Devotional
Elder Weatherford T. Clayton was serving as president of the Canada Toronto Mission when he was called to be a General Authority Seventy at the April 2016 general conference.
Elder Clayton received a bachelor’s degree in psychology in 1977 and a medical degree in 1981, both from the University of Utah. He worked as a resident physician at UC Irvine until 1985 and had his own medical practice until 2013, after which he worked as a laborist until he retired in 2014.
Elder Clayton has served in a number of Church callings, including full-time missionary in the French Canadian Mission, bishop, high councilor, Gospel Doctrine teacher, counselor in a stake presidency, stake president and mission president.
He married Lisa Madeline Thomas in 1976. They are the parents of five children.
Doris Kearns-Goodwin
Presidential historian and Pulitzer Prize-winning author
March 21, 2017 Forum
Doris Kearns Goodwin is the author of six critically acclaimed and The New York Times bestselling books, including her most recent, The Bully Pulpit: Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, and the Golden Age of Journalism. The Bully Pulpit is a dynamic history of the first decade of the Progressive era, that tumultuous time when the nation was coming unseamed and reform was in the air. Steven Spielberg’s DreamWorks Studios has acquired the film and television rights to the book. Mr. Spielberg and Ms. Goodwin previously worked together on Lincoln, based in part on Ms. Goodwin’s award-winning Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln, an epic tome that illuminates Lincoln's political genius, as the one-term congressman and prairie lawyer rises from obscurity to prevail over three gifted rivals of national reputation to become president. Team of Rivals was the winner of the Lincoln Prize and the inaugural Book Prize for American History.
Ms. Goodwin was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in history for No Ordinary Time: Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt: The Home Front in World War II. No Ordinary Time was also awarded the Harold Washington Literary Award, the New England Bookseller Association Award, the Ambassador Book Award and The Washington Monthly Book Award.
Ms. Goodwin graduated magna cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa from Colby College, and was a Woodrow Wilson Fellow. She earned a Ph.D. in Government from Harvard University, where she taught Government, including a course on the American Presidency, and, at the age of just 24, became a White House Fellow, working directly with President Lyndon Johnson. Ms. Goodwin served as an assistant to President Johnson in his last year in the White House, and later assisted him in the preparation of his memoirs.
Keith Vorkink
BYU Marriott School of Management
March 28, 2017 Devotional
Keith Vorkink is an Associate Dean in the Marriott School of Management and current holder of the Driggs Professorship in Finance. He earned his undergraduate BA in economics from BYU and his PhD in economics from the University of Rochester. In addition, his work at BYU he was an assistant professor in the finance department at Bryant College and also held a position in the finance department at the Sloan School of Management at MIT.
Keith’s research has focused in the field of behavioral economics and asset pricing. His research generally revolves around the role that higher moments, such as variance and skewness in a security’s payoff distribution and investors’ preferences for such payoffs, play in the pricing of assets. Keith has published articles in the top finance and econometric journals including Journal of Finance, Review of Financial Studies, Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, and the Journal of Econometrics. Keith and his wife, Marcie, are the parents of four children Sarah, Eric, Elizabeth, and Annika. They have lived in Rochester, New York, Providence Rhode Island, and Boston Massachusetts. They currently live in Mapleton Utah.
Erin Holmes
BYU School of Family Life
April 4, 2017 Devotional
Erin Kramer Holmes is an Associate Professor and Associate Director of BYU’s School of Family Life. Her research focuses on fathering and mothering, including the effects of marriage, co-parenting, mental health and employment on parents and children. In 2011, Dr. Holmes won the National Council on Family Relations Award for Best Article on Men in Families by a New Professional; two other articles she published have been finalists for the same award. In 2013, she was a finalist for the international Rosabeth Moss Kanter Award, placing her article in the top 7 of 2,500 articles published on work and family in the year 2012. Recently, she won teaching awards from the School of Family Life Student Association, and from the School of Family Life. Professor Holmes has been happily married for 18 years to her opera singing husband, and they are parents to three children.
Eric Gillett
BYU Department of Design
April 11, 2017 Devotional
Eric Gillett, a professor of graphic design, is currently serving as the Chair of the Design Department. He has taught at BYU since 1998 and holds an M.F.A. in graphic design from the University of Utah. His work is regularly featured in national and international design publications including Communication Arts, Print, How, Eye, Creative Quarterly, Graphis, NY Art Director’s Club and The One Show. His commissioned work as a designer, art director and creative director has included work for many Fortune 500 companies. His research focus relates to design systems, branding and typography. He is married to Kimberly Sonntag Gillett (Nursing, ’89), and is the father of six children, four of whom are currently attending BYU.
