Kenan-Flagler Business School at the University of North Carolina will lead development of the Reaching Out 2009 Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender (LGBT) MBA Conference, designed to help connect companies with LGBT MBA students.
Kenan-Flagler’s bid to organize the conference showed “the most thoughtfulness in trying to move the conference forward in terms of content and networking opportunities for students,” said Elizabeth Davis, a member of the organizing committee for the 2008 conference and a second-year MBA student at Georgetown’s McDonough School of Business.
UNC Kenan-Flagler will work jointly with three other business schools to develop and organize the Reaching Out 2009 Conference, which will take place in October 2009 in Atlanta, Georgia. Other organizing schools include Emory University’s Goizueta Business School, Duke University’s Fuqua Business School and the Georgia Institute of Technology’s College of Management.
The conference has as secondary goals to build the LGBT community and heighten the visibility of this community and make it more a part of the general work experience. “Mentoring students is a big part of it as well – helping them to decide on future careers and learning more about each of the industries they might consider working for,” Davis added.
This year’s conference attracted 900 attendees and 80 companies, and hopes for the year ahead are to draw more than 1,000 attendees. The 2009 conference, open to all MBA students and alumni, will include the launch of a new workshop to support emerging LGBT student groups at business schools and to help expand an existing MBA admissions recruitment event targeting LGBT students.
Successful career panels from the 2008 conference will be repeated next year, including Media and Entertainment, Finance and Investment Banking, Entrepreneurship, Technology, Retail and Microfinance and International Development. Two new career panels, one focused on human capital consulting and the current direction in human resources and another focusing on nonprofit careers, also will be added.
Previous Reaching Out conferences have been organized by students at the business schools of University of Virginia, Stanford University, Columbia University, Harvard University, Purdue University, Northwestern University, Dartmouth College, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Yale University, Cornell University and the University of Pennsylvania.
To learn more about the Reaching Out 2009 Conference or to register, click here.
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