Name: Tserennyam “Tseggy” Sukhbaatar
BYUH employee since… 2021
BYUH alum: class of 2012
My job at BYUH is… an assistant professor in business management. I teach marketing classes.
I grew up in… Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia
I served a mission in… the Korea Seoul Mission
I chose to teach at BYUH because… Heavenly Father guided me to do so. The university encouraged me to apply and offered me the job. My wife and I prayed about it, and the prompting we received told me to take the job. To add to that, this is a special place for me since I graduated here.
I’m currently working on… a paper about Enkhiin-Od Michael “Mongolian Mike” Sharavjamts, a Mongolian college athlete playing for the Utah Utes men’s basketball team. With my colleague, Professor Joel Reece from the Faculty of Sciences, we’ve been collecting data on Mongolian Mike’s social impact on the youth of Mongolia, and how his behavior influences them to aspire to be a better person and athlete. Mongolian Mike has been inspiring youth and diverting their bad behavior into good behavior. It’s interesting to see where his career is going, with the potential to join the NBA.
What sparks my interest in my field is… because the marketing world is constantly changing. I grew up as an artistic and creative kid, so the challenge of an environment that changes through the current trends allows and requires me to flex my creativity.
My favorite memory in BYUH… was surprisingly reuniting with someone who I taught and baptized on my mission here on campus. He was a Korean guy who spoke no English that I taught and baptized back in South Korea. The last I heard, he became inactive in the Church. Years later, after going home and starting college here at BYU–Hawaii, I passed by him in the McKay hallway, surprised to see him as a student here and speaking fluent English. Needless to say, we screamed in joy, we hugged, and caught up with each other happily, and we both felt like Alma and the four sons of Mosiah (Alma 26) reunited joyful in our gospel journey.
The next big trip I’m interested in… is traveling home to Mongolia next summer with my family.
When I have 30 minutes of free time… I either read some books about business, do some stock trading on the Robinhood app, or just do a small meditation by pausing and pondering to focus and concentrate, in order to generate more ideas.
One item on my bucket list is… to learn to play at least one classical music piece on piano.
I have always… been a fan of soccer since I was a kid. I play soccer as a hobby, and I coached soccer for a semester for the American Youth Soccer Organization in Kahuku. In my youth, I dreamt of being a professional soccer player, but I ended up choosing marketing instead.
The title of my autobiography would be… “Be Crazy” because we all need to go crazy sometime in life.
My all-time favorite quote is… “Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you.” (Matthew 7:7, 3 Nephi 14:7) I love this quote because it leads to action. If you wanna learn something, just ask. Ask your teacher, ask for your computer, or ask for GPT; it’s up to you!
A movie I’d recommend to my students is… Air (2023), directed by Ben Affleck, which chronicles the origin of the Air Jordan basketball shoe line in 1984 and how the employees of Nike sought to strike a business deal with Michael Jordan. I always recommend this one to my students in Marketing because of the values it teaches about the subject.
One thing that instantly makes my day better is… when I wake up. To me, every day is an amazing and beautiful day. I am always thankful for everything in my life, and it makes me super happy to see the brighter side of everything.