Four Penn State alumni are successfully employed at Deloitte & Touche, Accenture, Capital One and Ernst and Young. Each enjoyed a decorated and busy undergraduate career at Penn State.
There's one more thing the four have in common: They're all gay and out in their respective workplaces.
On Friday afternoon at the Bank of America Career Services Center, the group of alumni spoke to an audience of undergraduate and graduate students for an event called "Being Out in the Workforce." The event included a catered meet-and-greet lunch, a discussion panel and optional one-on-one discussions with the alumni.
Christopher Clement, Class of 2004, spoke about how sometimes he feels gay people at his company, Deloitte & Touche, are used as marketing tools to show the public that the firm does indeed hire gay people. He also described the subject of diversity in the workplace as "the elephant in the room no one wants to talk about."
He said companies are also concerned with retention, meaning they don't want to lose members of the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community once they're employed.
Khanh Vu, Class of 2004, currently employed at Ernst and Young, agreed. She said that sometimes, "you can be the poster gay person." She said she has grown comfortable with being out in her workforce.
David Davis, Class of 2004, currently employed at Accenture, said he felt a disconnect in diversity from when he graduated Penn State to when he started working.
"Diversity is about feel-good, life-changing moments," he said. "Diversity [in college] is walking away from campus feeling enlightened, but corporations are concerned with how diversity will benefit them in the long run. I sometimes feel like a liability."
After the panelists spoke, LGBTA students in the audience met up with the four individually to ask them any questions they didn't want to ask during the panel. Davis told a story about the interview process for obtaining his job at Accenture.
"I used to wear a lot of rings. I took them out for my first two rounds of interviews at Accenture. I randomly decided to put them back on for my third interview, and someone complimented them," he said. "It ended up being a great connection. That was a good message to always be yourself."
Lindsay Williambrown (graduate-business administration) said she was impressed with the panel.
"I thought it was a phenomenal way of describing how diversity is a pragmatic business decision and doesn't have anything to do with personal preference," she said.
Claire Gonyo, assistant director of Penn State's LGBTA Student Resource Center, helped coordinate the event. She said that discussing being out in the workplace is a "big deal" -- students often don't think about whether they'll be out post-graduation until they're actually employed.
"It's good for students to start thinking about their level of confidence before they start a job. Like, how they would answer if someone asked them if they had a boyfriend if they are a lesbian," Gonyo said.
