Karen Valdez

Weber State University took top honors in the 2019 Utah Public Relations Student of the Year Competition, hosted by the Salt Lake City chapter of the Public Relations Society of America. 

Karen Valdez, a communication major, shared first place in the contest with a BYU-Idaho student, and WSU students Kylie Harris and Conner Arvidson were selected as runners up.

“Honestly, it’s unreal,” said Valdez, who finished her bachelor’s degree in communication last spring. 

Students in the competition created a yearlong strategy to raise awareness for the Major Brent Taylor Legacy Foundation, which honors North Ogden mayor Maj. Brent Taylor, who was killed while serving in the Utah National Guard. The foundation is dedicated to making a difference in the local community, raising scholarship money and supporting military families. Finalists were selected for a live competition, where they presented their strategies, pitched news stories, wrote news releases, developed responses to a crisis and spoke to journalists in a mock news conference.

Valdez received $1,000 and was honored at the Golden Spike Awards. She later began an internship with the foundation and helped connect it with Ogden Peak Communications, WSU’s student-run public relations and advertising group.

Valdez relates the lessons Taylor taught his children and exemplified those she learned from her own parents, who pushed her to become the first in her family to attend college.

“My parents are such hard workers,” she said.

“When I was young, my dad worked two different jobs, and he would get up really early, and he used to say, ‘If you’re ever going to do something, give it your best shot. If you’re not going to do your best, you might as well not do it at all.'”

The 2019 competition marks the seventh time since 2011 that Weber State students have earned a top prize in the competition.

“It’s honestly changed my life,” Valdez said.