For nearly three decades Reaching Out MBA has been connecting LGBTQ graduate students as they seek their master in business administration degrees. Known as ROMBA, it is hosting its annual conference in Los Angeles next month under the theme of "Rainbow Connection," a nod to the beloved song among the musical repertoire of a plush green frog with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
Since launching in 1999, ROMBA has also maintained relationships with LGBTQ alumni of MBA programs but in a more informal manner than when they were in school. The nonprofit doesn't have a paid membership structure, for instance, but does have a group on LinkedIn that numbers more than 3,500 people.
Looking to assist LGBTQ business professionals who are in their mid-careers, ROMBA decided to launch a new conference for such individuals. It will be held concurrently at its September gathering for MBA students.
The new offering has been dubbed Reaching Out PRIZM with the tagline "See your career in a new light." It is geared for people two to seven years post their MBA program or a similar business development experience.
"We are very excited about launching PRIZM this year. It has been long awaited," said Aidan Currie, a gay man who has been ROMBA's executive director for six years.
The idea behind the new initiative is for ROMBA to be "reaching out more," explained Currie. It is a way to continue to support the LGBTQ MBA students it has formed relationships with as they move up the corporate ladder.
"We are moving beyond strictly MBA," Currie, 48, told the Bay Area Reporter during a recent phone interview from Atlanta where he is based. "We know this is something our community is really looking for."
PRIZM isn't an acronym. Rather, it is inspired by how rainbows can occur when light is refracted by a prism. It is an analogy for how the conference attendees will be able to envision various career paths in their professional lives.
"It is a nice play on kind of light coming in to a prism and seeing a full rainbow of opportunities as you get through the conference," explained Currie.
ROMBA is expecting to have around 150 people sign up for the inaugural PRIZM conference. The hope is this pilot program will be a success and become an annual offering.
"PRIZM hopefully will feel accessible over time to a lot more LGBT talent and have a ripple effect on their impact at work and to impact change in the world personally. It is something I am very excited about," said gay San Francisco resident Jevan Lenox, who serves on ROMBA's board and is the chief people officer for drug company Insitro.
It is an acknowledgement that ROMBA has not just been helping MBA students, said Lenox. That work is "only one specific lever" for the nonprofit, he added.
"Among the conversations on the board was we want to take the strengths of the organization and expand that impact in ways that feel additive in ways to things already in the ecosystem. PRIZM feels additive," he told the B.A.R.
And rather than just say "goodbye" to the MBA students it works with upon their graduation, PRIZM is one avenue for ROMBA to continue to grow those relationships and continue to nurture LGBTQ business professionals, said Lenox.
"We should be helping people later in their careers to also have transformative moments," he said.
Lenox, 45, first became involved with ROMBA two decades ago when he worked as a consultant for McKinsey & Company. The firm sponsored the nonprofit and sent Lenox to its conferences to recruit new talent.
Later, when he enrolled in the MBA program at Harvard Business School in 2009, he attended ROMBA's conferences as a graduate student. Throughout his career Lenox has remained involved with the group and joined the nonprofit's board four years ago.
"I really believe in the cause of helping LGBT business talent develop and progress in their careers, and not just on an individual basis but also through systems change. We can help LGBT leaders be visible and be positive forces for change in the workplace and in societies," said Lenox, a father of two boys, 4 and 6 years old, with his husband, Ryan Lenox, a real estate broker at Compass.
Via his job with McKinsey, Lenox spent three years working in Shanghai from 2005 to 2008, during a time when the police frequently raided gay bars and LGBTQ Chinese citizens faced harassment. Luckily, he had the support of his company to be out at work.
"Business can be a huge lever of change in many of these places," noted Lenox, who had witnessed such a dynamic during his time as a board member of Out for Undergrad, a nonprofit that works with LGBTQ undergraduates in various fields.
Queer second-year Stanford MBA student Shikhar Sood, 29, who was born in India and grew up in several African countries and Great Britain, came out after attending the 2014 Out for Undergrad conference while earning a bachelor's of business administration in finance and French from Emory University's Goizueta Business School.
"I came out the day the conference ended and was able to find my job consulting at Bain through that conference," recalled Sood, who attended ROMBA conferences on behalf of his company and sought it out once he decided to enroll in an MBA program. "I think an MBA is an amazing way to just have a very intentional time to reflect both professionally and personally."
By becoming involved with ROMBA MBA students can find much more than just networking, stressed Sood, who is president of Stanford's Pride group this year.
"For me, it is a platform and a way to connect with people beyond the professional sense. You can create long-lasting bonds and find other people who have gone through a similar experience and journey of being queer," he said.
ROMBA also provides fellowships each academic year to more than 200 LGBTQ MBA students at 70 business schools and corporate partners. Each receives, at minimum, a $20,000 scholarship and is invited to attend a retreat for the fellows.
"There really is no place like ROMBA. It is just a way to walk into a room and be authentically yourself and be fully seen by everyone around you," said current fellow Cullen Quigley, 28, a gay second-year MBA student at the University of Southern California Marshall School of Business.
He is the first part-time USC student to be selected a ROMBA fellow, as he splits his time between Los Angeles and New York City where he works in advertising and marketing for Macy's. Quigley decided to seek an MBA as a way to consider his professional path.
"I am really using an MBA for a career pivot," said Quigley, who is interested in pursuing opportunities in the tech sector or consulting. "This has been a really great opportunity to see new things and also see the West Coast."
The Ohio native learned about ROMBA when applying to graduate schools. His scholarship is helping to cover his tuition.
"I really wanted to get some West Coast business acumen," said Quigley, who earned a B.S. in journalism from Ohio University in 2018. "I was going to be a weatherman."
He has been out of the closet throughout his college years. Quigley has had no issues while on the campus of USC, and as vice president for conferences with his business school's LGBTQ student group, helps put on various events.
"USC is a great school to be authentically yourself. There is a wonderful presence of LGBTQIA-plus individuals," he told the B.AR. "We really are lucky, that's why it's so exciting ROMBA will be in Los Angeles this year. There is such a diverse community here."
Depending on the size of their school, LGBTQ MBA students could find themselves the only out member of their two-year program, noted Lenox. Thus, via ROMBA, they can foster a network of contacts who could assist them post their graduate programs.
"To build that kind of community is really, really powerful," Lenox said. "Historically, LGBT folks in business struggled with how to build a networking community in an environment where you are maybe sometimes very different and maybe the only one. What we know is it is very well established that communities and networks are what make people successful over time."
Currie, who was born in London but grew up mostly in Toronto, attended his first ROMBA conference in 2010 while earning his MBA at the NYU Stern School of Business. He was then hired by Marriott International in its internal consulting group and convinced it to become a corporate partner of ROMBA.
"I was so impressed with the substance and style of the event. It had incredible education opportunities and was a lot of fun, too," recalled Currie, who moved to Atlanta to work for a different hospitality company where he met his now-husband.
As he began to think about a change in careers, a headhunter called him about leading ROMBA. After being hired, he disbanded the nonprofit's Boston office and had his staff use shared workspaces. Today, ROMBA employs five people in five states but none on the West Coast.
With the PRIZM conference, being held September 27-29, Currie said tickets have been priced to be affordable for LGBTQ professionals. The first 50 cost $300 and then the price increased to $400; any remaining after September 21 will cost $500. Attendees will also attend the main conference's dinner, with keynote speaker this year being gay actor and TV series "Schitt's Creek" co-creator and star Dan Levy.
"You don't have to be part of a company paying a lot of money to kind of go join the event," said Currie.
Students find valuable connections
The main ROMBA conference, taking place September 26-28, attracts more than 1,800 attendees and dozens of companies. For current students, tickets cost $250 until August 25 then go up to $300 if bought by September 20.
Quigley went to last year's conference held in Chicago and described it as "an event of firsts."
"So this could be the first time a student ever used their pronouns," he said. "It could be the first time they are ever in a queer professional space. Or maybe it is the first time they have ever been out of the closet with fellow peers."
Asked what his pitch would be to LGBTQ MBA students for attending a ROMBA confab, Quigley pointed to the camaraderie and networking potentials. He called it "a really great launchpad" for kicking off one's MBA journey and learning from queer business leaders.
"It is really amazing to think no matter what main city I fly to now in the U.S., I have a small professional network and friends in all of those cities thanks to ROMBA," he said.
Sood pointed to the recruiting done by corporate employers at the conference as one main draw for why MBA students should attend. Being back on the West Coast will draw different companies this year; it was last held in the region in 2014 when ROMBA took place in San Francisco.
"L.A. gives us access to a lot of atypical employers or networks," he said. "It is good we are mixing it up. It will be easier for people on the West Coast to attend, for sure, and for a fresh set of panelists and sponsors to be involved as well."
The range of topics discussed at the conference can be "eye-opening," said Lenox. In recent years sessions have focused on the issues transgender business professionals must confront, he noted as one example, with the panelists then able to make connections with trans and nonbinary MBA students.
"I am going on 20 years going to these conferences on and off and still it is not stale for me," he said.
For this year's conference, Quigley and Sood are one of 12 MBA students from across the country selected to help organize it and plan a certain topic track at it. Quigley chose tech and named one session "The 101 on Tech Recruitment."
"Because we have the 101 Highway down in L.A.," he said. "We are emcees as well and work with corporate partners to execute roundtables and presentations and mock consulting case competitions."
He also had submitted this year's theme inspired by the "Rainbow Connection" song from the 1979 film "The Muppet Movie." Sung by Kermit the Frog, the song's refrain about "the lovers, the dreamers and me" felt apt, said Quigley.
"I thought it was a perfect way to celebrate L.A.," he explained.
Quigley also liked how rainbows "have nothing to hide," a fitting message for the MBA attendees.
"Sometimes the best thing to do is jump in. What better way to do it than with people who see you for who you are and accept you?" asked Quigley. "Go where you are celebrated. One hundred percent that is what Reaching Out has done for me."
To learn more about the ROMBA conferences and the organization itself, visit its website at reachingoutmba.org.
Got a tip on LGBTQ business news? Call Matthew S. Bajko at (415) 829-8836 or email [email protected]
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