About Us

What is Out for Business?

Out For Business (O4B) is the Johnson School's gay-straight alliance and includes members of the LGBT community, people with friends and/or family in the LGBT community and anyone who sees the importance in creating an attractive work and social environment for current and prospective LGBT students, faculty and staff. Our activities include:

• Hosting social events for the entire Johnson School community
• Recruiting LGBT prospective students
• Establishing ties with corporate LGBT employee groups
• Participating in national LGBT business conferences
• Socializing with the larger Cornell LGBT student community

History

The Out for Business gay-straight alliance was founded in 2003 - a young but dedicated group with over 60 gay and straight student members fully recognized and funded by Cornell. Faculty advisers include behavioral economist Robert H. Frank, a monthly contributor to the "Economic Scene" column in the New York Times. In 2004, the Johnson School and Out for Business organized the first-ever Out for Undergraduate Business Conference, which brought together 76 undergraduates and many recruiters and sponsors from the banking and consulting industries. As a result of this event and several other initiatives, the Out for Business membership was recognized in 2005 by the Johnson School's Office of the Dean at the "The Third Annual Johnson School Awards for Outstanding Leadership" for having made the most positive contributions to the Johnson business school community.

Among the first major US universities to admit women, Cornell University has been at the forefront of diversity since its founding in 1865. Ezra Cornell's mission, which is incorporated in the official seal of the university, was to "found an institution where any person can find instruction in any study." At a time when universities were bastions of the establishment, Cornell's first president, Andrew Dickson White, spoke of the need for a center of learning that would serve scholars "regardless of sex or color," words that presciently foreshadowed the egalitarian policies elite American higher education would eventually propound more than a century later.