By Joe Melvin '98
Self-adhesive name tags, schmoozing with company reps over cocktails, free dinner at MacArthur Park -- all the trappings of the typical company recruiting function at the GSB. Except this event wasn’t typical. First, it was sponsored by McKinsey & Company (which adds a certain cachet to any recruiting event) and second, it was a reception for gay, lesbian and bisexual students at the Stanford GSB and Stanford Law School.
About twenty students attended McKinsey’s October 8 reception for gay, lesbian and bisexual Stanford business and law students at MacArthur Park restaurant in Palo Alto. The reception was sponsored by G.L.A.M. (Gays and Lesbians at McKinsey) to discuss issues that affect gays and lesbians in the professional workplace.
This is the first event which G.L.A.M. has sponsored at the GSB, partly as a result of the successful dinner it sponsored at Harvard last year. As for numbers, the Stanford turnout exceeded that of Harvard. In the words of Glen Ramsdell, a consultant from McKinsey’s Silicon Valley Office, the dinner was "an unqualified success" in introducing McKinsey to an unprecedented number of lesbian, gay and bisexual students at Stanford.
Students had positive reactions to the dinner, as the consultants and analysts present testified to the open and accepting atmosphere at their firm. McKinsey’s North American partnership recently approved domestic partner benefits for employees, and it is expected that partners abroad will approve these benefits world-wide by the end of the year.
Scott Lopez-Gelormino, co-chair of Out for Business, the gay, lesbian and bisexual student association at the GSB, attended the dinner and remarked, "I worked with McKinsey last summer in New York City and was really heartened by G.L.A.M. and its members. I found McKinsey a very safe place to be ‘out’."