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Issue date: 3/8/05 Section: Events

Brett Mattingly ´05 with Jean Dolan, keynote speaker and founding member of Booz Allen Hamilton´s LGBT organization

Nearly six hundred MBA students and professionals converged on Boston's Westin Copley Place hotel from February 4-6 for the 7th Reaching Out (LGBT) MBA Conference. Lead organizers for this year's conference included six students from MIT Sloan as well as students from Harvard and Yale. Conference attendees represented forty MBA programs from the U.S., Canada, and Europe and corporate sponsors included Citigroup, IBM, and Credit Suisse First Boston as well as over forty other institutions.

As the world's first and largest lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) MBA business event, the annual Reaching Out MBA Conference (reachingoutmba.org) provides a unique forum for discussing business and social issues facing business school students and the business community in general. "The Reaching Out conference is a one-of-a-kind opportunity for hundreds of LGBT MBA students from around the world to network, socialize, and learn from other students and role models in the business community," said Brett Mattingly '05, who led marketing and registration for this year's conference.

Organizing the conference was a rewarding leadership experience for all of the Sloan Students involved, and included substantial logistical, financial, and managerial challenges. Conference activities included keynote speeches, panel discussions, workshops, networking activities and a career fair. Jaime Singson '05 led program planning for the conference and organized several panel discussions including "LGBT Advertising" and "Developing LGBT Marketing Plans." Sloan volunteer Dina Goldstein '06 organized "LGBT Impact in the Non-Profit Sector." Panel discussions were a central part of conference activities and featured many prominent speakers from both the public and private sectors.

As one of the highest-profile educational sponsors of conference, MIT Sloan supported the MBA student panel, "Reaching Out in the Business School Environment," which included a discussion of how to raise the visibility of LGBT issues at business schools. Tom Schmidt '06 sat on the panel, representing MIT Sloan's LGBT Group. MIT Sloan scored an "A" on a recent report by Aplomb consulting, ranking top business schools in terms of LGBT-friendliness (the report can be found at http://www.aplomb.com/bschools2_frameset.html).

Representing the MIT Sloan administration at the Reaching Out MBA Conference were David Capodilupo, Executive Director of the MBA Program; Catherine Gamon, Director of MBA Student Affairs; Laura Wilcox, Assistant Director of MBA Student Affairs; Jon McLaughlin, Assistant Director of MBA Admissions; and Phillip McMullen, Associate Director, Career Education.

Keynote speakers at the conference included Ted Childs, Vice President of Global Workforce Diversity at IBM; Jean Dolan, Principal at Booz Allen Hamilton and founding member of the firm's LGBT organization; and Lowell Selvin, CEO of PlanetOut, Inc., the nation's first LGBT market-focused company to have an IPO.

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