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Welcome to American Heritage School's Patriot Podcast, hosted by the students of the podcast class at the AHS campus in downtown Salt Lake City. Each episode features students interviewing professionals, experts, and inspiring guests to explore real-world experiences through the lens of The Seven Principles of Personal and Civil Liberty. These conversations are designed to uplift, educate, and spark meaningful dialogue within the family.
Tune in with your family each week to learn together, reflect on the values that matter most, and be inspired to live with greater purpose and principle.
Learn more about The Seven Principles of Personal and Civil Liberty here: https://slc.americanheritageschool.org/the-seven-principles
What's up? What's up? What's up?
Chandler:We're here at American Heritage School
Speaker 3:in Salt Lake City, and this is the Patriot Podcast
Mary:where we get to talk to different professionals
Chandler:about their awesome jobs.
Speaker 3:At AHS, we strive to live
Chandler:the seven principles of personal and civil liberty.
Mary:So we'll be talking to each professional
Chandler:about how they apply
Speaker 3:these principles each day.
Bryce Anderson:Let's dive right in.
Mary:Let's dive right in.
Speaker 3:Let's dive right in.
Mary:Hi. I'm Mary. Welcome to the American Heritage School Patriot Podcast.
Chandler:I'm Chandler, and today we're privileged to talk with mister Bryce Anderson. Mister Anderson has worked for many years in the priesthood and family department for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter day Saints. He has managed various church products, including face to face, digital scriptures, and the Book of Mormon app, general conference, and the church pageants among others. Mister Anderson, we're looking forward to learning from you today.
Bryce Anderson:Thank you. Great to be here. Thanks for having me.
Mary:Mister Anderson, will you please give our listeners a brief self introduction including your education and career track?
Bryce Anderson:Sure. I grew up here in Utah, here in Salt Lake City in Taylorsville. I went to BYU. And while at BYU, I was a student for several years not knowing exactly what I wanted to be when I grow up. So I postponed growing up.
Bryce Anderson:I thought I wanted to be a business major and I took finance classes and accounting classes and I started well down the road of becoming a business major. And I only did it because I didn't know what I wanted to do, so I said I'm gonna go really broad in general. And I had a brother who was a business major and a father who was a business major. And one of them pulled me aside and said, hey, listen, Bryce. Anyone and everyone needs to do business.
Bryce Anderson:Like, you work in a hospital as a nurse, like, you gotta understand business. A little bit. If you run your own dental practice, you gotta understand business. Like if you're gonna Business is the underpinnings of everything. What you should do, Bryce, is you should go get some real hard skills.
Bryce Anderson:Some real solid skills. Like use your hands or something. Go be a nurse or something. And then and then come back and then come back and get a master's in business. So I actually walked away from the business program, and I decided to do construction management.
Bryce Anderson:I started in taking all these classes. I'm like framing houses and wiring up like electric like an electrician. Right? Doing the wiring class. And in 2,010, 02/2011, there was a great recession.
Bryce Anderson:Like, the economy totally tanked. And the the construction management degree, like that program, was only placing 10% of their grads. And so, I decided I gotta do something. And there was another program that was kinda parallel to construction management, which
Chandler:was called facility and property management, which the church hires a lot
Bryce Anderson:of those grads because the church has a lot of properties all over the globe Right. Who they need to manage and maintain and run their their buildings. So I said, great. I'm gonna graduate now. I'm gonna graduate in facility and property management, and I did.
Bryce Anderson:And I my very first job I took was the facility manager in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. I moved to Louisiana. I was newly married, and I graduated, got married, got a job all within six months. And there I worked for a couple of years. In fact, I I'd only been on the job, so I'm like this brand new green green guy, like, don't know anything.
Bryce Anderson:And I get down to Louisiana, and the guy who's training me, he's like, okay. Let me show you some things. And we had 60 properties. So think of this. There's 62 buildings in Southern Louisiana, 62 church buildings.
Bryce Anderson:There's seminaries and institutes. There's churches. There's there's temple. There's mission offices. There's welfare buildings.
Bryce Anderson:There's 62 buildings. Okay? And he's teaching me everything. He's like, now, just remember in August, we have what's called temple shutdown. And the temple shuts down for two weeks and it's like all hands on deck and we gotta really remodel.
Bryce Anderson:We got a couple things we gotta do and we gotta do it in this tiny two week window. So just be ready because that's gonna be a really busy time. I was like, okay. Yeah. I'm excited.
Bryce Anderson:I'm ready. Let's go. Well, as the temple shutdown approached, an emergency happened to my trainer. His name was Donald Abel. Good guy.
Bryce Anderson:He had a son-in-law who was killed.
Chandler:Uh-huh.
Bryce Anderson:And he he died just days after their little granddaughter was born. So he's got a daughter with a brand new baby whose husband just passed away. And he's like, I gotta go. Good luck. I'll leave you with the team.
Bryce Anderson:They're really good. Good luck, though. And then on top of that, hurricane Isaac, which was this category one storm that came in to the Gulf Coast, like, came and parked over New Orleans, and it rained and rained and rained and rained. So I'm this new kid whose training was paused while my trainer left for an emergency, who then got hit by a hurricane where we had buildings that were flooded, and it was temple shut down. And and I just remember being like, wow, this is the hardest thing, the craziest thing.
Bryce Anderson:And I remember telling my wife, I don't know when I'll see you again, but I will be back. And and we disappeared for, like, weeks at a time, and it was really hard to get into these buildings that were flooded because the roads, the freeways were flooded. Anyway, it was it was an incredible experience that put me on the map at church headquarters because they would send guys out there and they're like, hey, we heard you need some help. And it's temple shutdown and you got hit by a hurricane. So how can we help?
Bryce Anderson:And I and I remember these guys from Salt Lake from church headquarters saying, who's running this? Are you in are you the one in charge? I was like, yeah. I'm the only guy here. My trainer left.
Bryce Anderson:And I showed him things we were doing. I showed him and it wasn't all my genius. Like, it's not like I knew what was doing. I had an awesome team that I had these rock star mechanic technicians, guys who were working with me. We had awesome contractors who were willing to help.
Bryce Anderson:But I just remember at a very early stage in my career, being thrown to the wolves and what seemed like a really hard thing, it was actually a huge opportunity. Because Salt Lake came out and they said, who are you and what are you doing? And I showed them like, wow, this is pretty good. Good job. Good job.
Bryce Anderson:Good job. Good job. And eighteen months later, I was invited to come and interview for a job at Salt Lake City, which is where I'm from and ultimately where we want to get back to. I remember in interviewing for that job and they told me this. They said, hey, you should know Bryce that, like, when we get people out in those corners of the kingdom like in Louisiana, we're not quick to move you out.
Bryce Anderson:Like, once we get someone to take that job in Baton Rouge, we're happy to, like, leave you there. For some reason, we feel inclined to invite you to come back to headquarters and be kind of a facility manager here at the church office building. So instead of 62 little properties all over Southern Louisiana, they're like, you're in charge of this giant skyscraper, 1,000,000 square feet. There was a team of us, but like, come back and be the facility manager of this this skyscraper.
Mary:That's crazy. Headquarters.
Bryce Anderson:Yeah. So I came back and one of my very first jobs was to remodel the priesthood and family department's floor. And it was a construction project and they were systematically going through the skyscraper remodeling floors, a certain floor at a time, trying to renovate the whole building. There's asbestos and other things throughout the building. And I jumped in on this very first project they gave me, and it was I learned a ton and I made great friends.
Bryce Anderson:And in the priesthood and family department, there's a lot of fun things happening, which I can tell you more about, but
Chandler:Yeah.
Bryce Anderson:I remodeled and was part of a really special project there, and it turned out awesome. The end product was amazing. The bishopric came and walked the floor, and he's like, hey, this is awesome. What what do you guys did with this floor so good? We want you to do our floor next.
Bryce Anderson:Come do the bishop's office next. But before I ever moved on to the next project, they the priest and family department said, hey, would you be interested in like working with us? Like in instead of projects with brick and mortar and nails and carpet, like what if you came and worked on projects that are more spiritual in nature? Like helping the rising generation. And there's still cost scope and schedule to these projects, but they're just not brick and mortar.
Bryce Anderson:And it was a total sea change for me because here I was, like, kind of on a fast track in the facility construction world, like, what what happened to me in Louisiana was awesome, what happened to me at headquarters with this First Floor remodel turned out to be like a real feather in my cap. The leadership and the executive team knew who I was and I was performing well. So to, like, totally leave that track and to go into precinct family seemed like a big leap. And but that's how I got to the precinct family department, and I've been there now twelve years, and it's been Wow. Some of the most fun and rewarding things.
Bryce Anderson:So Mhmm. I can tell you more what priests and family does if you want. I don't know if that's helpful, but that's that's where I so I'm only I've only been like an official graduated employee, full time employed, benefited church employee. I've only been in in the church. I mean, I got hired in 02/2012, so we're going on thirteen years.
Chandler:I'm not
Bryce Anderson:I'm not I'm not I'm not that seasoned, if you will, but I've had in those thirteen years, I've had some really wonderful experiences. So
Chandler:Yeah. I bet. Yeah. I'd love it if you share more about your time in the priesthood and family department.
Bryce Anderson:Okay. So priesthood and family department sounds like a strange name, and everyone I tell, they're like, what? What what is the priest and family department? I'm gonna the in the church, there are councils and committees. K?
Bryce Anderson:At the highest highest level is the council of the first pregnancy and the quorum of the twelve. Underneath those, that governing body of the first prince and the 12, there are three executive councils. The first one is the priest and family executive council, the missionary executive council, and the temple and family history executive council. K. Those three councils line up with kind of the the mission of the church.
Bryce Anderson:Perfect the saints, proclaim the gospel, redeem the dead. So back in 1836, on April 3 in the Kirtland, Ohio Temple, Christ came and then through messengers came, and it was Moses, Elias, and Elijah, and they restored the keys for the gathering of Israel. And those keys reside in those three councils, Priest and family executive, missionary executive, and temple family history executive. Now the church is a massive world. There's so many things you can do at church.
Bryce Anderson:You can be a cowboy on a ranch, and you can be building meeting houses and temples, and you can be doing family search or family you know, like Yeah. There's it's a world of stuff, but those three executive councils are kind of the ecclesiastical head under the first parenthesis and the 12, which is the head actually, the head is Jesus Christ. And then it goes down to the first parenthesis 12 and these three councils. And under the priest and family's head council, there's a department. And you say, so what do they do?
Bryce Anderson:They perfect the saints. And and so in the priest and family department, we do everything that touches members. So missionary department's doing things for missionaries when they enter the mission field, whether they're a young or or a senior couple. And temple department does everything inside the walls of the temple. And priesthood and family department does everything else from the moment you're born to the moment you die, that whole span.
Bryce Anderson:So when you think, like, what what what touches me at church? Like, what are the products you use at church? The hymn book, scriptures, your curriculum, like, follow me, all that's priest and family.
Chandler:Your Okay.
Bryce Anderson:Children and youth program. Right? And then there's there's more obscure things, prison ministries. There's a team that's supporting members who are incarcerated. And we have a a military relations team that supports chaplains, LDS chaplains.
Bryce Anderson:There's 250 LDS chaplains around the globe who serve in the armed forces, the US armed forces, and we support them. So it's a super broad department that's like called member it just supports members and leaders in at church, and I like to call it the perfecting the saints department.
Chandler:At American Heritage School, we try to live by the principles of personal and civil liberty. Which of these principles has most guided your career, and would you be willing to share a personal experience about how that principle has helped you?
Bryce Anderson:One of the things I've had the privilege to do is meet with saints all around the globe. And I've been on almost every continent, and I've met with saints everywhere, and and I've seen the effects of freedom and lack thereof. What I love about the gospel of Jesus Christ is it is based on, like, the very fundamental from the very beginning, it was based on agency. And the Lord, the God, our father, presented a plan, and it's and it's based on agency. And even though Lucifer said, I'm gonna force everyone.
Bryce Anderson:I can I can force this and we can all be guaranteed to return? It couldn't have worked because agency is an eternal principle, this freedom to choose this agency. Right? This principle of agency is so important, and it and it and it is infused in everything we do at the church where we try to we try to do what Joseph Smith taught, and that was teach them correct principles and let them govern themselves. Right.
Mary:Yeah.
Bryce Anderson:And so so for example, when we do a handbook, when we write the church handbook, it's hard to create something that fits all people. We can't. We have to give them principles, and they have to be able to govern themselves. I'll give you an example. Just the other day, we're talking about camps.
Bryce Anderson:Well, camps in Alpine, Utah is very different than camps in Ghana, Africa. Camping isn't a thing in Africa. Some of these good saints and members of the church don't even have beds to begin with. So what what does it mean to go camping? How do you implement a youth program for a global church and talk about if you talk about camping, like, and I know camping out in the woods with tents, like, just doesn't translate.
Bryce Anderson:Rather than telling them exactly what to do area by area and dictating what what the program should look like or or how it should be done, we have to let them locally adapt it and adjust it. And when we do that and they they have that license and permission to do that, the gospel flourishes for them in their way, and it's really special. I've I've learned in my time working at the church. Think of it this way. I like to think of it this way, like, when you ride a skateboard, you can do some pretty cool things and you can go pretty far, like, I mean, you can go down the block and around the corner.
Bryce Anderson:You can make it all the way to the grocery store on your skateboard and that's cool. And and and your bike, you could probably go further. And are there rules and laws to riding a bike? Yeah. Yeah.
Bryce Anderson:Mhmm. I've got eight kids actually. My oldest is only 11, and I'm I'm learning now that I'm on my fifth child teaching him how to ride a bike. I'm learning ways to teach him to ride a bike, but there are certain rules and but once you master it, my my four year old can just, like, go. And all of a sudden, learning this bike, he has this new freedom that he's never had before, but it comes by abiding by some rules or laws of riding a bike.
Bryce Anderson:Well, so it is when you graduate to a car. Mhmm. If you drive a car, are there more rules to riding a driving a car or in a bike?
Chandler:Definitely the car.
Bryce Anderson:Yeah. Definitely the car, but where can
Speaker 3:you go in the car?
Chandler:Everywhere.
Bryce Anderson:Right. It's liberating. Right? It's freedom. And then let's let's take it up one more notch.
Bryce Anderson:Flying a plane. Which one has more governance and more laws? Probably the plane. Yeah. Like, if you look in that cockpit, you're like, I have no idea how to fly this thing.
Bryce Anderson:This is gonna take some serious schooling. And then let's go up one more level. What's higher than a plane?
Mary:A rocket?
Bryce Anderson:Yeah. Do you think flying a rocket's harder than flying a and there's more laws that govern it. To leave the stratosphere, it takes. But when you leave the stratosphere, what are your limits?
Mary:Nothing.
Bryce Anderson:They're greater than a plane, which is greater than a car, which is greater than the bike, which is greater than the skateboard. These laws of God provide, and we we view them. Sometimes they they talk about members of the church being, oh man, you don't drink, you don't smoke. You you're so confined by commandments.
Speaker 3:You know, like, no. No. No. No. No.
Speaker 3:No. You don't understand.
Bryce Anderson:When we follow the laws of God, they bring you freedom. And instead of riding around in the car, you're you're going coast to coast crossing oceans, and you're going places that only God can take you when you follow those laws. And I think those are principles in the gospel of of liberty.
Mary:What interests or skills should a student develop now to succeed within within your area of expertise? Why would you recommend a high school student explore your profession similar to yours?
Bryce Anderson:There are generalists and there are specialists. A generalist has its advantages and disadvantages, and a specialist has advantages and disadvantages.
Chandler:Right.
Bryce Anderson:Specialists have like a very focused career path. They have a very niche job that they do, but when they are like experts, they have an advantage. And and one of the advantages sometimes is even like earning potential. Like, we need a technician, and there's only so many people in the church who can do this thing. And by God, we're gonna get them.
Bryce Anderson:Yeah. We're gonna pay them to do it because they're the only ones who can. And then there's generalists. And you say, well, why why would I wanna be a generalist? And I guess that's what I said is I I took a generalist path, and I have a generalist type job.
Bryce Anderson:Generalists have to be adaptable. They have to be able to, like, problem solve across multiple disciplines, but it allows them to be strategic and allows them to lead diverse teams and and cross functional teams. Sometimes the the best leaders are generalists, they're just a little bit they're good at a a little bit of everything. Right? Yeah.
Bryce Anderson:And you need both. The workforce needs both. And one path is not better than the other. They both they both are needed. There's a trend there's a saying that says, you know, a jack of all trades, master of none.
Bryce Anderson:But if you've there if you actually read the whole quote, it's actually a jack of all trades, master of none, but oftentimes better than master of one. Yep. I I came through a construction management job, and now I'm I'm running programs for children and youth, young single adults at the church and you're like, wait, how did that translate? I went on to b school at BYU and I graduated with a master's degree and I went on to become very general and broad in my interests and likes. And so I when you say, how do we how do we get in that path that you are in or tell us what it means to go down your path or your career path, I'd say, ever learning, always learning, always trying to make connections, and and just being a generalist.
Bryce Anderson:Like, you love English, and you love math, and you love history, and you love to break take things apart and put them together. Are you an engineer? No. Are you a historian? No.
Bryce Anderson:Are you a mathematician? No. But you love it enough that you you have this breadth and depth of experience that you can draw from and that will take you a long way. And so that'd be my advice. Be ever learning and be make yourself as broad and as deep as possible in your interests, and in your skills and abilities, and they will help you
Chandler:lead. I think that's really valuable. Thank you. Mhmm. Now, a tradition we have with our podcast interviews is we ask everyone we interview to share their favorite joke with us.
Chandler:Would you be willing to do that for us today?
Bryce Anderson:Favorite joke? Mhmm. Yeah.
Mary:I mean, with eight kids, I'm sure you know Bad jokes. Bad
Bryce Anderson:jokes. So I was walking into the temple the other day, and this guy reached out and shook my hand. He said, hey brother Anderson, what did one snowman say to the other? I was like, what? It's like, do you smell carrots?
Bryce Anderson:And then
Mary:That's wild.
Bryce Anderson:I asked him. I actually when he told me that joke, said, I'm actually supposed to take a joke to this interview here at the American Air He's like, I got a great one for you. It's just what they need. If you're gonna talk careers, this is the one. Okay.
Bryce Anderson:He said, why did the scarecrow receive an award?
Mary:Why?
Bryce Anderson:Because he was outstanding in his field. That's pretty good. Okay.
Mary:Thank you, mister Anderson. It's been nice to meet with you.
Chandler:Yeah. Thank you for taking the time to talk to us today. Appreciate
Bryce Anderson:it. Thanks so much, guys.
Mary:We hope you enjoyed listening to our podcast.
Chandler:Special thanks to our guest today.
Mary:Our music was generously provided by the Lyceum Orchestra.
Speaker 3:That's it for American Heritage School Patriot Podcast. See you next time.