Three years ago, Keilani Ngatuvai sat in her car outside what was then known as Vivint Arena, called her mom and cried for 10 minutes.
The then-senior at Bingham High School in South Jordan, Utah, had just learned her college education would be completely paid for, thanks to Utah Jazz owners Ryan and Ashley Smith.
Ngatuvai had applied for the Utah Jazz Scholarship program and then been invited to the arena for a final interview earlier that day.
After a tour, Ngatuvai and the other finalists sat in the Jazz locker room, where they were told they’d been awarded the scholarship.
“I probably had the least satisfied reaction of anyone else in that room because I just sat there. I was so shocked. It took me a second to process that, and so I was just kind of sitting in the room like, ‘Did that actually happen?’” Ngatuvai said.
The emotions would come later when she was on the phone with her mom.
“I was so, so grateful, and I never in a million years thought that would happen,” she said.
Fast forward three years, Ngatuvai is double majoring in marketing and strategic communications at Southern Utah University and leaving for a study abroad trip to Sicily on Sunday.
“Honestly, I have no words, and I could never have enough words to express how big of a gift this was in my life. It has 100% changed the trajectory that I had pictured for myself,” Ngatuvai said of the scholarship.
In March 2021, shortly after purchasing the Utah Jazz, Ryan and Ashley Smith announced the Utah Jazz scholarship program.
For every Jazz win in the 2020-21 and 2021-22 seasons, they awarded a Utah high school student from an underrepresented group with a four-year scholarship to a Utah university.
The scholarship covers the cost of tuition, fees, books, supplies, and room and board, and it’s “the biggest scholarship in the state,” according to Mike Maughan, an executive with Smith Entertainment Group and president of the SEG Foundation.
Maughan said the Smiths view their team leadership as a form of stewardship. They’ve regularly considered how to “invest in and ensure a very strong community element to everything that they were doing,” he said.
The Utah Jazz Scholarship program was their first way of doing that.
“They’ve always believed deeply in the power of education and the importance of education, and the ability of education to help people kind of advance in their lives and careers and do something really impactful and meaningful,” Maughan said of the Smiths. “They wanted to make sure they could find a way to invest in this rising group of high school graduates in the state of Utah.”
The program has awarded 114 privately funded scholarships to Utah students, all of whom demonstrated financial need. Among the recipients, 87% are first-generation college students.
With their scholarships, 114 scholars have been able to pursue degrees in various fields, including finance, law, education and medicine.
Two of the program’s scholars have already graduated, and another 15 are set to do so this year.
Maughan said the feedback SEG hears the most from scholars is that the scholarship “has fundamentally changed their lives.”
“Sometimes in life, we just need someone to say, ‘I believe in you,’ and that’s enough to help us start to believe in ourselves, maybe in a way that we didn’t even do that before,” he said. “These are really incredible kids who have bright futures, and no one needs to give them permission to be great. They already are. Sometimes it’s just removing a few of the barriers that might have been in the way to allow them to kind of achieve the potential that they have.”
In October, the scholarships were integrated into the newly formed SEG Foundation.
Caroline Klein, SEG’s chief communications officer, said Ryan and Ashley Smith’s goals for the foundation go hand-in-hand with the scholarship program.
“It’s really using the platform to do good, and, as Mike (Maughan) said, create a lasting impact, very focused on a growth-oriented mindset … and then engaging with the youth, because, again, they’re our future and can make a lasting difference. So all of that really plays very well into exactly what the Utah Jazz Scholarship Foundation is and does. It’s incredible to wrap that all into one,” Klein said.
The scholarship does more than cover the financial burden of college. It provides the scholars with mentorship from the entire SEG organization.
Ngatuvai recalled sitting alone at a Jazz scholars event in September 2022. She was debating whether she should leave when Klein sat down and introduced herself.
Unaware of Klein’s job, Ngatuvai lamented that she was torn between majoring in marketing or communication, “but I told her I was leaning towards marketing because I just didn’t see a lot of benefit with communications,” Ngatuvai said.
Klein told her, “If you are passionate about communications, communications is a skill that is transferable across anything that you do.”
The next time they saw each other, Ngatuvai told Klein she was double-majoring in the two and loving her communication classes.
The mentorship goes both ways, Klein said, describing the spark the scholars provide in her life.
“I couldn’t think of a better way to spend my time than mentoring the next generation of leaders, especially ones like the Utah Jazz scholars, who are so passionate, so motivated, so engaging and so willing to soak everything up that they have,” Klein said.
In addition to mentorship, SEG helps every interested scholar, regardless of their field, land an internship each year. Many of those internships are with the Jazz’s partner organizations.
“We have them interning in everything from the medical field to marketing to real estate to architecture to civil engineering, and a lot of those work out pretty easily,” Maughan said.
For the harder to place internships, Utah businesses step up to help.
“I make a call to a couple of CEOs and say, ‘Hey, we need to place someone doing this or that,’ and people immediately say, ‘We’re in. How can we help?’” Maughan said.
Daniel Nguyen, the son of refugees, first learned about the Utah Jazz Scholarship while watching a Jazz game.
A few months later, he found out he was a Utah Jazz scholar.
“I think my mom and dad were really relieved because I remember talking to them about college, and they said that wherever I choose to go for (college), they are willing to work a little bit more to help pay for college. But then, I didn’t want that for them,” he said.
The scholarship meant Nguyen, a first-generation college student, could dive headfirst into the opportunities available through the University of Utah without the burden of having to work his way through school.
Nguyen has done that and more. In addition to majoring in biology and pre-med, he is minoring in human rights and resources, chemistry, and Spanish.
He has also been heavily involved in extracurriculars. Nguyen has been a part of at least 10 clubs and served as a campus ambassador, a Union programming council freshman ambassador and study abroad ambassador.
He’s currently a residential adviser for the Honors College and teaches roughly 60 students in the university’s first-generation scholars program. He also does cancer research at the Huntsman Cancer Institute.
“All these opportunities, I feel like I wouldn’t have been able to do without that scholarship because I would been so focused on working instead,” he said.
Last fall, Nguyen was named homecoming king. Standing on the field of Rice-Eccles Stadium in front of thousands of people, he reflected on the opportunities he’s been given through the scholarship and the example he’s set for other students.
He thought, “Without the Utah Jazz, I wouldn’t be standing here today representing all the first-generation students, representing all the students who had little when growing up, but chose to pursue more and to ask for resources and to ask for help. I feel like it was really cool just to stand there and be like, ‘Wow, if I can do it, then I can inspire a lot of different students to do it too.’”
The first thing Tavan Russell did after learning he was a Utah Jazz scholarship recipient was hug his mom.
“It was an amazing thing and really heartwarming to just see my mom, kind of like break down, and with her being a single mother, it was very nice to see all of her hard work just get paid off,” he said. “I think as any child of a single mother, you’d love to just see, you know, paying it back forward to your mom for everything that she’s done. So, that was a really heartwarming moment for me, and definitely a moment I won’t ever forget.”
Paying for her three children’s education was a “really big worry” for his mom as she strived to provide her children with opportunities, he said.
Russell realized that his scholarship is a way he can reward his mother for her sacrifices. He has used that as motivation to make the most of what he’s been given.
“You better go out there every day of the year during the school year and just put in everything you have, everything you got. There’s no excuse. There’s no obstacle that should stop you, and you should just keep on going. Because those two things right there, those are just enough reasons to put your head down and just keep on grinding,” he said.
Russell, from North Salt Lake, is now a student at the University of Utah, studying pre-dental. He plans on applying to dental school this summer.
He said he’s benefitted from the mentorship the scholarship has provided, especially through conversations with Maughan and Ryan Smith.
“Whenever we have these little meetings and I talk to them one on one, they really open my eyes to some kind of new life lesson that I can apply at the time,” he said. “Two of the best people I’ve ever talked to, like mentors I ever met are just right there, anytime, anywhere, and it’s been a blessing to have them be right there.”
Russell expressed his gratitude for the scholarship and the difference it has made in his life.
“I truly, really don’t know where I’d be without them, and I’m just super blessed to be able to pursue my career and dreams because of them,” he said.
While credit might be given to SEG for changing these students’ lives, Maughan believes it’s more accurate that the credit be given to the students “who are committed to changing their own lives, changing their own future, taking advantage of this opportunity, of the amazing place that Utah is to really go live out their dreams.”
