Latter-day Profiles

Charlie Bird was Cosmo the Cougar at Brigham Young University from 2016 to 2018. He received national acclaim for his multiple dance performances with the BYU Cougarettes. As Cosmo, he performed across the country, including the ESPN College Football Awards and on America's Got Talent. 2017 was dubbed "Year of the Mascot" by NBC Sports in honor of Cosmo's character and performance. Charlie was born and raised in Southwest Missouri and served a two-year mission for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Redlands, California. He graduated from BYU in 2018. Charlie is an active LBGTQ advocate and is involved with multiple nonprofit LGBTQ organizations nationally and across Utah.

Sharla Goettl is the author of “Spiritual Resilience: Leading Our Youth to Go and Do”

Dr. Trina Boice is an author of 30 non-fiction books. She is an author coach at FromBooks2Business.com that helps writers become best-selling authors with strategic marketing. Trina also writes movie reviews at MovieReviewMom.com. A popular international keynote, she has gone on many speaking tours around the world.

David Christensen is a senior advisor to the non-profit organization Mentors International. David is an author and has served as a mission president in Chile and as MTC President in Guatemala.

Joel Bishop is the president of Rise to Your Challenge which offers speaking, training and consulting services. Joel is an accomplished actor, speaker, and presenter.

Meg Johnson is a founding partner for Jumping Turtle LLC and Our Turtle House. Her work as an influencer has touched many on a local, national, and international level and Meg is a recipient of the Athena Leadership Award. Meg was a ballroom dancer and professional party planner. Then a weekend trip changed it all and Meg was paralyzed on March 6, 2004 when she was hiking in Southern Utah.

Ed Sexton is the Dean of the College of Business and Communication at BYU-Idaho. He has served in the Sixth Quorum of the Seventy, a bishop, high councilor, mission president, stake mission president, stake president’s counselor and stake president.

Carmen Rasmusen Herbert was a Top 6 finalist on the second season of FOX’s “American Idol” in 2003. She has appeared on many talk and entertainment shows including David Letterman, the Today show, MSNBC, and Good Morning America.
Carmen co-wrote, recorded, and released an album in 2007 called, “Nothin’ Like the Summer” with an award-winning hit single by the same name who’s music video spent six weeks at the top of CMT’s Top 20 countdown. She has toured all over the United States and Canada singing and speaking to a wide variety of age groups. Her talk on CD, “Who’s Your Idol?” has inspired thousands of youth to stay true to who they are while fulfilling their own unique life purpose.
Carmen is a columnist for the Deseret News and writes about faith, family, entertainment, and the adventures of raising four boys and one crazy dog with her husband Brad, son of Utah Governor Gary Herbert.

Jorge Cocco Santangelo is an artist who works with painting, sculpture, lithograph, etching, and ceramics. Painting is his preferred medium. He also is skilled in washi zokey, art created with handmade paper. He paints in a new artistic style he calls "Sacrocubism," which he says portrays sacred events with several features of the Post-Cubist movement.
He was born in Concepción del Uruguay in Entre Ríos, Argentina. As a boy, he would sleep with a pencil in his hand and by morning his blankets and sheets would be covered with pencil markings. He won his first art award at the age of nine. He has lived and worked in Spain and Mexico and maintains studios in Argentina and the United States. He has exhibited in one-man shows in the North and South America as well as Europe and Asia and has shown his work in fifty group shows worldwide.

Garth Smith was born in Brigham City, Utah, and currently resides with his wife and family in Bentonville, Arkansas. He graduated from BYU with a degree in design engineering technology, and he’s worked extensively in the Church’s youth and missionary programs. He’s released multiple CDs and performs widely on behalf of Bonneville Communications. His popular concerts use multimedia to create multisensory experiences that delight and inspire the soul.