Out for Undergrad (O4U) Appoints Senior Leadership for 2023 Business Conference

O4U appoints first Co-Directors for 2023 Business Conference, tops $1 million in O4UB sponsorship and assembles most diverse class in its history

NEW YORK, NEW YORK, USA, May 4, 2022 /EINPresswire.com/ — Out for Undergrad (O4U), the nation’s leading not-for-profit organization supporting high-achieving LGBTQ2+ undergraduates in reaching their full potential, has named Samrudhi Vaghmare and Cesar Villavicencio as Co-Directors of O4U’s 2023 Business Conference. The students will convene in Spring 2023 at Goldman Sachs in New York. Co-leadership is a first for O4U in its almost 20 year history but the exponential growth of the organization suggests this is the right move at the right time.

Dr. Cindi Love, O4U Executive Director said, “We are so excited and honored to include our gifted colleagues, Samrudhi and Cesar in our O4U senior leadership team for 2023. We are living in a moment of radical possibility worldwide, one in which we will either break down or break through historical patterns of marginalization for so many people. As LGBTQ2+ leaders, we recognize our opportunity and responsibility to support voice and agency to individuals for whom so many barriers have existed. While we live in a time of great disruption, we recognize that these fluctuations are the birthplace of innovation. We could not have better leaders than Sam and Cesar to take us to new places in our work with students.”

Samrudhi Vaghmare is a Senior Consultant, Data and Analytics at EY. Samrudhi said, “It is an honor to be able to serve Out for Undergrad through the Conference Director role with Cesar for O4UB 2023. For the past five years, I have been fortunate enough to have experienced the magic of this community, as a student, a sponsor, and as part of the organizing team. As our operations scale up, it will be critical to find new ways to give and facilitate interactions that empower LGBTQ2+ professionals. With our mission in mind, I aim to keep building on the many successes we have achieved so far and have another historic conference season.”

Samrudhi’s reference to scale reflects O4U’s growth trajectory. Between 2018 and 2022, O4U engaged more sponsoring employers than anytime in its almost 20 year history, 181 of the leading global corporations in Business and Finance, Engineering, Tech and Marketing in 2021-22. O4UB raised more than $1 million in 2022. O4U Conferences underwrite all student expenses and price increases associated with COVID make continued growth in revenue critical to their success. O4U’s rigorous outreach programs identified and admitted its largest and most diverse student cohorts in this same time period, more than 1000 in 2021-22. More than 50 percent of students in 2022 identified as non-white and 16 percent Transgender, Non-Gender Conforming or Non-Binary.

Love continued, “Until the most underrepresented individuals are recruited and retained in our largest corporations in numbers greater than single digits and until we see them in the most senior executive roles and in the Boardrooms, we cannot really claim success in eradicating the socially constructed barriers to achieving full potential.”

Cesar Villavicencio is a Finance Manager at Microsoft. Cesar said, “I cannot express in words how grateful I am for this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to give back to Out for Undergrad (O4U), an organization that has meant the world to me. In many ways, the O4U family loved me before I even knew how to love myself. Self-acceptance means more to me than any internship, job, promotion, or bonus. It lies at the heart of the truly transformative impact of our organization. For showing me and countless others how to embark on a journey of self-acceptance and self-love, I am forever indebted and committed to O4U and our mission of helping LGBTQ2+ students reach their full potential. Alongside my co-Director, Sam, with whom I am thrilled to partner, I promise to do what it takes to serve our students, sponsors, volunteers, and board members with kindness, passion, and empathy.” 

O4U will host four 2023 hybrid conferences including an additional day of programming for O4U’s Early ID/Mosaic program. Students or sponsors who cannot or choose not to attend in person can attend virtually. Students also have access to Management Consulted and Vault curriculum at no charge, underwritten by O4U.Year-round mentoring and O4U’s Breakthrough Speaker Series offer additional opportunities for professional and personal development.

O4U was founded in 2004 at Cornell by gay MBA students. 50 students gathered that year to meet with LGBTQ2+ professionals in banking, finance and consulting. Since that time, O4U’s 7000+ alumni have come to represent one of the most diverse cohorts of high-achieving LGBTQ2+ professionals in the world. O4U and Out Leadership recently signed an agreement to co-produce Out to Succeed 2.0, the largest research study of LGBTQ2+ employees and undergraduates in the talent pipeline in existence. O4U also partners with Hive Diversity and WayUp to bring the highest level of visibility to LGBTQ2+ potential hires to employers dedicated to inclusion in the workplace.

Dr. Cindi Love
Out for Undergrad
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The Life Changing Experience of O4U