Reaching Out MBA (ROMBA) has been educating, inspiring, and connecting the next generation of LGBTQ+ business leaders for more than two decades. The nonprofit organization does work all year round, but its main event is the annual ROMBA Conference; the 2019 conference took place from October 10 to 12 in Atlanta, GA. Below, Emma Le (MBA’20) recaps her experience at the conference.
Emma Le
Inclusion and advocating for minority groups has become an important topic for talent management, yet many companies and organizations fail to establish proper programs and activities to achieve that goal. A company I once worked for actually received a huge backlash from its own employees when leaders didn’t take a stand for the LGBTQ+ community while its competitors did. I decided to participate in ROMBA to explore a wide range of good companies that embrace and support the LGBTQ+ community, and the conference went well beyond my expectations.
First, for the recruiting aspect, I tried to take advantage of the ROMBA job platform to find the roles that I was interested in applying to and to network with the recruiters early. I secured two interview invitations a few weeks before the main event, which gave me more time to prepare. Thanks to Owen’s strong student and alumni network, I received lots of helpful information and advice about my target companies to prepare for the networking and interviewing sessions at ROMBA.
Second, for the networking aspect, I believe ROMBA offers a unique opportunity that other conferences cannot. Due to the specific target audience, the event took place at a smaller scale where we can have more personal conversations with recruiters and other students who share the same interests. In addition, ROMBA organized so many lunch sessions and receptions for networking purposes. I felt like most people at the conference were so genuine, kind, and supportive. It’s easy to open up the conversation and establish strong connections as we all go through the same difficulties in life.
Last but not least, there were many exciting presentations and workshops conducted by leaders of big companies, covering topics from leadership to industry knowledge to new innovation. I personally enjoyed the “Representation in Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning” keynote from Microsoft, BCG, and Google’s speakers. The keynote focused on the problems caused by these new technologies as they rely on past data that includes social biases such as race, gender, and sexual orientation and touched on MBAs’ roles in reducing such biases as leaders. —Emma Le