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Open for Business
While the initial generation of gay activism was ignited in the streets, the up-and-coming set of business students are sharpening the skills needed to propel the movement further
By Michelle Garcia
An Advocate.com exclusive posted March 12, 2008
Open for Business

In 1994, Kevin Jennings left his teaching career to establish the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network and become its executive director. Two and a half years into his tenure, the president of GLSEN’s board of directors asked the Harvard graduate if he would be willing to go back to school for his master of business administration, better known as an MBA. He enrolled at New York University and graduated in 1999.

Jennings is one of the few executive directors of a national gay rights group with an MBA -- others have law degrees or worked their way up without an advanced degree. It’s a degree he sees as integral to the success of the gay rights movement.

“Progressives in general tend to make the mistake of thinking that we're going to win because we're right,” Jennings says. “That really isn't how that works. Organization and persistence is incredibly important, almost as important as motivation and passion. I was trying to build an organization that could convert people’s passion into concrete improvements. Going into the training of an MBA was very helpful for that.”

The early founders of gay rights organizations gave the world an incredible gift, says Jennings, by establishing their organizations and building them into complex, big-budget operations of human activism. But the future of activism requires a new skill set.

“We've built them, but now we need people who will know how to run them,” he says. “Of course, they still need passion. If they didn't have passion, they would be working somewhere like Goldman Sachs. God knows they aren't working at some of these places because of the money.”

Coming Out Corporate

Brian Richardson, a student at the University of California, Berkeley’s Haas School of Business, had apprehensions about entering his MBA program. “I feared the worst from the business world, especially toward LGBT people,” he explains. “But I could not have been more surprised about how welcoming and affirming the community is -- not just Haas but business schools around the country.”

Richardson became familiar with other business schools this year when a group of LGBT business students from Haas and Stanford’s Graduate School of Business organized the annual Reaching Out LGBT MBA Conference in October 2007 to connect MBA candidates and potential employers.

Ten years ago the conference was a small affair, attracting 30 students and three companies. But this year there were “almost 900 people and 80 companies,” says Richardson. “We wanted to have even more companies, but we ran out of space at the hotel. Everyone wants a piece of that pie.”

Richardson started out in 2001 as a high school geography teacher for Teach for America in New Orleans. Two years later he went to Washington, D.C., to work in politics, became a spokesperson for the Democratic National Committee during the 2004 presidential election, and then went on to work for Louisiana U.S. senator Mary Landrieu. Now he intends to use his MBA to make an impact not in the boardroom but back in government.

“I felt like Washington was filled with people who wanted to do good but who had no management experience or skills,” he says. “So I thought I'd go back and see what I could find from an MBA program and try to translate that into the public sector.”

Victor Eng, a sophomore at the Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania, wasn't out when he first came to school. He didn't want his sexual orientation to conflict with his education or his future career in financial services, so he kept mum on the subject. As he puts it, “business isn't really a super-gay profession.” Eventually a friend convinced him to attend Out for Undergraduate Business Conference, similar to Reaching Out MBA but for undergraduate students.

Garcia is The Advocate's editorial assistant.

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