2018 Utah Mother of the Year
Biography
Tina Cannon grew up in Brigham City, as the fourth of nine children to Byron and Clara Parkinson. While majoring in Accounting at Utah State, Tina took time to serve an LDS Mission to Independence, Missouri, and be an English teacher in Taiwan. Because he was a rocket scientist AND handsome, Tina consented to marry a BYU graduate named David in September of 1993. While medical professionals warned Tina that pregnancy would be unlikely, the opposite turned out to be true. David and Tina welcomed their 4th child shortly after their eighth wedding anniversary. While raising their two daughters and two sons in beautiful Mountain Green, Tina has served her community in multiple ways. She is currently a seminary teacher for youth ages 14-18, teaches an adult class for women at her local church, is a partner in a CPA firm, and serves as a County Councilman for Morgan County.
Parenting Philosophy
Because of medical complications, it is a miracle that I am the biological mother of our four incredible children. Because of this, we believe that each of our children were sent to our family for a reason and purpose. When two of our children were diagnosed with autism, this conviction shaped how we chose to approach the diagnosis. The world around us was telling them they were different, with special needs and problems. We decided to take the opposite approach and teach them that autism had given them unique gifts, but with these gifts also came unique challenges. We would rejoice in the gifts, as we worked to improve the areas of challenge. This principle has applied for each of our children. For example, while two of our children have the incredible ability to perform publicly without getting nervous they had the challenge of learning to care what other people were thinking in order to develop social relationships . Their “normal” siblings needed to learn to care less about what others were thinking in order to learn to perform publicly without overwhelming anxiety. As a whole, we have our challenges, our challenges don’t have us. Our family has been blessed by autism, because we are learning what the world looks like from different perspectives and gaining empathy and respect along the way. It has been our greatest joy to help each of our children see themselves as we see them.
Motherhood and Community
After the birth of our first child, I realized I had chosen a career path that would be very difficult to balance with being a mother. I changed my career emphasis from Management Accounting to Tax Accounting to better coordinate with the school year and being a full-time mother. When the demands of a Regional CPA firm became too much for my family, we made the decision to start my own smaller “mother-owned” firm. I became an owner and tax matters partner in Allred & Cannon in 2007. My partner and I have designed our business
to accommodate our schedules and responsibilities as wives and mothers. This has blessed both my family and my community by showing the ability of a women to be able to design her professional career around her family’s needs and to define her success according to her own parameters.
Utah Lt. Governor Spencer J. Cox, Tina Cannon, Senator Ann Millner
When we entered the “Special” Education world, we discovered a world of acronyms, terminology, programs and paperwork, all of it new and overwhelming. I decided there must be others who had felt the same way who could help us navigate the process. We found the Utah Parent Center which helped us form a local support group and provided our group with educational opportunities. I was so grateful for the help I had received that I completed the UPC training to become an IEP Coach and Parent Advocate. It is inspiring to work with the
incredible parents of incredible children, who only need knowledge the special needs educational system to become the best advocate their children could ever have. I have loved being able to help other parents acquire that knowledge.
After serving in several positions in the Morgan County Republican Party, I was elected to the Morgan County Council in 2014. My service as an elected representative has been a challenge as criticisms are often public and unkind. It has been a blessing to show my children by my example the principles we taught them as children. “Be Involved”, “We do hard things” and “Stand for Truth” are no longer trite adages, they are our reality.
Tina was nominated by Kera Birkeland who said:
Tina has always been not only a wonderful mother, but an amazing role model in our community. She displays kindness, compassion, and willingness to serve where others won’t. She is the only female on our county council. She is always looking at how things impact the families she represents. She is honest, fair, and hard working. We need more young girls and women to know Tina and her good works, because she will inspire that good in others.