By MADISON HIGHLAND
Many wouldn’t think that graduating from BYU in theatre could lead to a political career, but Helen Anderson traded a small role in the play “Our Town” for a leading role in Provo city government.
Anderson currently serves as the community relations and public information officer for Provo, but if you had asked her in college what she planned to do with her life, you would have gotten a very different answer.
Raised by a single mother who loved the stage, Anderson found that drama ran in her blood.
While studying theater at BYU, she spent time analyzing plays. She realized she had a knack for critical thinking, and she began to reconsider her career path.
“I had the notion that a lawyer was a prestigious thing to be,” Anderson said. “I grew up in the 70’s where there was a wave that said girls can be anything.”
After getting married, she began to further question the wisdom in continuing her study of acting.
“I got married three days before my 19th birthday to someone who has a head injury,” Anderson said. “It became pretty clear to me after a year or two that out of the two of us I was the most likely one to support a family.”
During her last year as an undergrad she decided to take the LSAT and apply to BYU law school. She was accepted, and play analysis translated into case analysis.
While in her first year at law school, Anderson and her husband Paris had their first child.
“In addition to growing up in the 70’s, my stepfather had a degenerative back disorder,” Anderson said. “So by the time I was a teenager my mom was supporting the family as a nurse, which reinforced my notion that women can do it all. I underestimated how hard that is — to do it all.”
It was after having their first child that the reality of how hard it is to do it all hit her.
Right out of law school, Anderson began working for a small firm where she spent the next nine years.
It was during her attendance at city council meetings that she realized she wasn’t interested in law anymore.
She applied for the position of public information officer for Provo City and began working there in October 2007.
“I think what that shows is that you can start out with one thing and you can change what you want to do,” Anderson said.
Despite the 10-hour days, Anderson said she wakes up in the morning and looks forward to going to work.
Although her days of theater are over, Anderson has managed to attend an improvisation workshop at Provo’s Comedy Sports.
On top of this, she juggles spending time with her husband, their four children, seeing movies and plays, managing the Miss Provo pageant and checking her Facebook profile.
When asked what qualifies a person to be a leader, Anderson used examples of BYUSA and the Miss Provo pageant.
“It starts with planning a party or a dance or a community service function, and I realized that it all starts with those things back in college that I thought people were just doing for fun,” she said. “People do that and then they graduate to something a little bit harder until they are running corporations.”
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