By Susanna McDonald

According to the 2022 U.S. News & World Report, Simon Business School ranks as the #2 most diverse MBA program in the country. I recently experienced the school’s belief in the importance of diversity and its willingness to support its students. I was fortunate to receive funding from the Ain Center of Entrepreneurship, as well as the Center for Experiential Education, to attend Reaching Out MBA (ROMBA) in Washington, D.C. The ROMBA Conference is the world’s largest gathering of LGBTQ+ business students and alumni. The event included a variety of panels, workshops, receptions, and a career fair with 100 corporate partners across industries recruiting LGBTQ+ MBA talent. At the conference, I was able to attend events like Navigating Intersectional Identities for Women, The Subtlety of Language: Allyship for our Trans Colleagues, and the Startup Pitch Competition.

One workshop of note was Funding Your Future: Securing Capital for your Startup. In the Q&A portion of this talk, I mentioned to the panelists that service-based businesses are often overlooked for venture funding (I run an online wellness coaching company). I further asked the panelists if they saw anything faulty about venture firms only investing in companies with 10x multiples vs. 2-3x. The panelists responded that venture firms are not designed to fund service-based businesses and that instead service-based business owners should look to revenue based financing and traditional small business loans.

I left that talk a little disheartened, but a ROMBA participant approached me later in the evening, regarding my share. He was a fellow coach and had also felt discouraged by the talk. He mentioned that coaches need to stick together in the entrepreneurial world, and shared his positive experiences booking speaking engagements and writing books to establish himself as a thought leader. We swapped LinkedIn connections, and he offered to share the pitches he sends to organizations on the keynote talks he can provide. I was blown away by the common ground I found with this participant. We were both queer, MBAs running service-based businesses. Those three markers are central to my identity, so to be in community with someone from that overlapping perspective brought immense value, not just from a knowledge-sharing perspective, but from a sense of being seen and being part of a larger whole.

Another conference highlight was when Simon Alumnus, Dusty Riddle, hosted the Simon ROMBA participants at his home for a happy hour. We were able to network with other DC Simon Alumni at the event, giving us a firsthand example of the importance of affiliations and extended networks. We expressed differing viewpoints on current events and public policy, but all with the air of mutual respect and a desire to entertain opinions other than one’s own.

Thank you to the staff of the Ain Center for Entrepreneurship for offering me the support to expand my mind and professional network at this conference. I am also grateful to the Simon Business School’s Center for Experiential Education for their pre-conference preparation. More broadly, thank you to the University of Rochester for your creed of ‘Meliora’, and the push to be ever better, which has inspired me toward challenging the cultural and social aspects of my personhood. I am left with the words of one of the featured conference speakers, Julie Goodridge, who was one of the lead plaintiffs in the nation’s first case to legalize same-sex marriage. Julie shared that she hoped us participants would look back on ROMBA as the starting point of our LGBTQ+ activism. I fully intend for my ROMBA experience to be just that.

Susanna McDonald ‘23 is a pansexual, mixed-race, feminist, cisgender woman from Romulus, NY. She is a second year at the Simon Business School at the University of Rochester, pursuing her MBA, with a major in general studies and a minor in entrepreneurship. She serves Simon students as Vice President for Student Wellness on the Graduate Business Council and is an active member of Simon Spectrum. Susanna owns a small business, Train With Susanna, where she helps clients improve their holistic wellness via private coaching online. For leisure, Susanna spends time with her fluffy son, Winston, obsesses over song lyrics, and reads about spirituality. You can connect with Susanna on LinkedIn or at trainwithsusanna.com.