Approximately 600 individuals attended the Reaching Out LGBT MBA Student Conference, a meeting designed to promote the visibility and networking abilities of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender business leaders. The event took place Nov. 17-20 at The Westin and Drake hotels.
The conference—which had the theme 'Beyond Diversity: Expanding the Role of LGBT Business Leadership'—featured well-known speakers in a variety of forums. For example, the panel of 'Media & Entertainment: I Want My Gay TV' included Sarah Warn Jellen, president and founder of Erosion Media; Jeff Marsh, founder of Marsh Partners LLC; J.R. Pratts, publisher of Instinct magazine; Stephen Macias, vice president of corporate communications at here! Networks; and Joanne Jacobson, vice president of business development and operations at Logo. Other speakers, such as Rick Garcia of Equality Illinois; Lowell Selvin, chairman and CEO of PlanetOut, Inc.; and Jessica Halem, executive director of the Lesbian Community Cancer Project, dealt with topics ranging from politics to business school issues.
For Julie Bennett, a first-year student at Northwestern University's Kellogg School of Management, attending this conference meant a lot. 'This is my first time attending the conference and I'm primarily here to recruit—and it's a great opportunity to meet people about companies from a gay perspective and help my recruiting chances as well,' she told Windy City Times. 'On the other hand, it's just a great chance to meet hundreds of [ similar ] people. For a whole weekend, we're not the minority—so it's a nice change of pace.'
The MBA students at Kellogg, the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business and Dartmouth's Tuck School of Business organized the event.