About us

The people who build.

30 students from a range of disciplines and backgrounds, working in velocity pods matched to the expertise your project needs.

Faculty Advisor

Scott Murff

Associate Teaching Professor of Strategy at the BYU Marriott School of Business, and former consultant at McKinsey & Company.

BYU Marriott directory LinkedIn

The builders

JD Davenport

Managing Director

JD is the Managing Director of AI Foundry and a BYU MBA candidate. Before the MBA he was an AI product consultant at Deloitte, then went from Technical PM to Principal at National Grid in about two years, building a cloud portfolio from zero to 500-plus services and an AI-driven pricing engine. He started AI Foundry to give MBAs real reps building and shipping with AI agents.

Rachel Moulton

Chief of Staff

Rachel is involved in healthcare analytics and product management with a background in public health. She's focused on improving healthcare delivery through data and strategy and hopes to drive meaningful change in healthcare outcomes and experiences.

Corbin Sterling

Director of Marketing

Corbin is a BYU MBA candidate concentrating in Marketing and Strategy, with a creative background rooted in music and movie production. He is focused on using AI tools to sharpen how brands market and decide what to build next.

Brandon Jeppson

BYU Products

Brandon is a BYU MBA ('27) in Product Management, and the VP of Sales at Cougar Strategy Group. He is currently standing up the partnership motion at Redo, and is building AI operating systems to open new revenue channels with leading 3PL and logistics providers.

Alex Sisk

External Deals

Alex is an MBA candidate concentrating in Finance with a background spanning commercial real estate, SaaS sales engineering, and entrepreneurship. He is launching a mortgage company with an AI-native operations strategy.

Abe Bedard

SMBs

Abraham is a strategy-obsessed entrepreneur, BYU MBA ('27), and CEO at Yatta Golf. After scaling the brand from scratch to $7M+ in annual revenue, his mission remains unchanged: build wicked-good product, develop world-class talent, and help humans enjoy the heck out of life.

Felix Vivanco Salazar

Alumni Relations

Felix is a BYU MBA candidate ('27) and a senior mortgage broker at Direct Rate Home Loans, where he leads a team of loan officers. He began his career as an investment banking analyst at Goldman Sachs, later ran multimillion-dollar neurology research at University of Utah Health, and spent a year facilitating microloans for women entrepreneurs across Southeast Asia, the Middle East, and Latin America.

Tulga Ganbat

Product Evaluation and QC

Tulga is an MBA candidate in Marketing and Product Management with a bachelor's degree in Statistics and Data Science. He is the founder of Orchuul.mn, Mongolia's first and largest AI-powered translation marketplace, which he independently built and scaled.

Dawson Broadbent

MISM

Dawson is a Master of Information Systems Management student at BYU Marriott on the AI track. He builds Workday reports, integrations, and orchestrations for BYU's finance and HR systems, and is building BidForge, a tool that uses Claude Code and vision models to automate estimating for electricians. He coauthored published research on AI for social good (AMCIS 2025).

Jake Healey

AI Tooling

Jake is a BYU MBA candidate ('27) with an engineering background spanning explosives, precision metrology, and medical devices. He was an explosives engineer at WESCO running drilling and blasting on mine sites, and before that did high-precision measurement work for defense, aerospace, and heavy industry, and quality engineering on medical devices at Innovasis.

Sylvan Scott

Thought Leadership

Sylvan is a BYU MBA candidate ('27) focused on product management and growth systems. At Piano by Pictures Academy he moved from product marketing to Director of Product and Growth, where he lifted onboarding completion 11x, tripled retention, and converted that engagement into $250K a year in high-margin revenue.

Chase Clement

Finance

Chase is an MBA candidate concentrating in Finance with a background in enterprise systems implementation and financial operations. A former Division 1 javelin thrower, he is now launching a mortgage company built on AI-driven automation.

John Passey

UX and UI Design

John is an MBA candidate at BYU Marriott with five years of experience making health insurance easier to understand, navigate, and use.

Tyler Doman

Education and Training

Tyler is a BYU MBA ('27) on the entrepreneurship track with a background in strategy and growth. He is pursuing Entrepreneurship Through Acquisition, where he plans to acquire a small business and use AI implementation to professionalize and scale its operations.

Enoch Councill

Ambassador, Cougar Capital

Enoch is a BYU MBA candidate and the Director of AI at Cougar Capital, the student-run investment fund, where he builds tools to speed up and sharpen the VC process. Before his MBA he worked in technology implementations, pre-sales, and customer success within B2B SaaS.

Jorge Beltran

Ambassador, Savage

Jorge is an MBA candidate at BYU Marriott and a Finance Intern at Ford Motor Company. Previously he led organizations through ERP transformations as a Senior Supply Chain Consultant.

Sophia Strong

Undergraduate

Sophia is a BYU Strategic Management student and a product management intern at BambooHR, with prior product work at Entrata, Leland, and Bankaroo.

Nathan McCauley

Undergraduate

Nathan is a BYU Strategy and Computer Science student and an associate product manager intern at Google, focused on helping students break into product management.

Ella Moore

Undergraduate

Ella is a BYU student, president of the BYU Product Management Association, and an incoming summer analyst at Goldman Sachs.

Calvin Nickerson

Undergraduate

Calvin is a Finance student at BYU Marriott and an aspiring management consultant, currently working with Solar Grazing Solutions.

Jordan Faust

Undergraduate

Jordan is a BYU Strategic Management student working in AI product management at Leland.

Carter King

Undergraduate

Carter is a Strategy student at BYU and a builder in Sandbox.

Tate Stevens

Undergraduate

Tate is a BYU student, VP of the Management Consulting Association, and an AI solutions architect at Cicero, part of MGT.

Kainoa Shintaku

Undergraduate

Kainoa is a BYU Marriott student focused on AI architecture and implementation, currently with TechForce Advisors.

Andrew Bedell

Undergraduate

Andrew is a BYU Strategy student and a strategy and operations intern at SensorHubb.

Our culture

AI Foundry is a program of the BYU Marriott School of Business and completely aligned to its mission, vision, and values.

In the spirit of Brigham Young's admonition to gather up all the good and true principles wherever they are found, these operating principles are gathered from four organizations we study and admire: Amazon's Leadership Principles, Bridgewater's original philosophy, McKinsey's values, and the Christlike attributes taught in Preach My Gospel. Credit is noted where it is owed.

We put the client's interest ahead of our own and measure ourselves by whether their performance actually improves. (After McKinsey)

We say what is true, especially when it is uncomfortable, and we carry an obligation to dissent when we disagree. (After Bridgewater and McKinsey)

We act on behalf of the whole program, never say that is not my job, and keep a bias for action. (After Amazon)

We hold standards others may find unreasonably high, and we keep raising them. Work counts when it ships and works. (After Amazon and McKinsey)

We stay curious, dive deep, and treat mistakes as tuition for the lessons they carry. (After Amazon and Bridgewater)

We pursue excellence together and care about the people we do it with. (After Bridgewater)

Faith, hope, charity, virtue, knowledge, patience, humility, and diligence govern how we treat every client, teammate, and competitor. (After Preach My Gospel)

Everyone here is empowered to give feedback, and the stronger habit is asking for it. The norm at the Foundry is to ask first. (Ours)

When the right course is ambiguous, ask: could I explain this decision to a leader I respect without going red in the face? If not, do not do it. (Ours)