Stories
Stories
Finding PRIDE
Topics: Demographics-DiversityEducation-Campus LifeLife Experience-Purpose and Meaning
Finding PRIDE
Topics: Demographics-DiversityEducation-Campus LifeLife Experience-Purpose and Meaning
Finding PRIDE
Edited by Jen McFarland Flint; Illustrations by Anthony Gerace
They posted notices around campus, discreetly inviting fellow gay and lesbian students to connect via an untraceable off-campus phone number. Those founding members launched what would become a decades-long tradition—a community within the community. The group’s name, originally borrowed from a similar group at Stanford, would evolve over time; its membership and public presence did, too. Today the PRIDE group is an association of 190 lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, and questioning (LGBTQ+) students and partners. It serves as a social and professional network, as well as a place to promote community and encourage advocacy for LGBTQ+ individuals at the School and in the world of business. Here, in honor of Pride Month, we hear about the role the student club played in the lives of some of those who belonged over the years.
“I was scared to death that someone would figure out where it came from, but I typed up a letter to my section saying that there are gay people around you, you just don’t know it.”
I was ultimately introduced to Ernie Phinney (MBA 1978), who was one of the founders of the Alternative Executive Lifestyles group. He also told me to try out for the B-School Show, because half the cast and crew were gay and lesbian. That year we had about 15 people in the group, with 7 or 8 per class. I went to an alumni event recently with about 20 guys who were about five years out of school, and they laughed hysterically at the name. They were incredulous that we couldn’t just say what the club was, but the reality was that we were afraid of being shunned.
There was an incident in my first year where one guy was making jokes in class. I was scared to death that someone would figure out where it came from, but I typed up a letter to my section saying that there are gay people around you, you just don’t know it. David Kusin (MBA 1979) was a reporter for the Harbus, and he published my letter. There was an uproar, and one classmate started spreading the word that David wrote the letter and was part of the radical gay liberation movement. He had nothing to do with it, except to coordinate with me to publish it. He took a lot of heat for me back then. Thanks, David!
In my second year, when I was looking for a job as a commercial and investment banker, I would look at their policies for nondiscrimination. Most banks had nothing, but Bank of America, Chase, and Citibank all did, so that’s where I applied. I decided on San Francisco-based Bank of America because they had a longstanding policy; the reality was, if you had a boss who was homophobic or uncomfortable, it didn’t matter. One of my goals in going to business school was to start my own business, so that my sexuality wouldn’t be an issue. Once I started working on my own, particularly with a business partner who was also gay, we didn’t worry too much about anything. Now I’ve been with my husband, Bob Holley, for 43 years. Last October, I was in the hospital for a few weeks, and Bob would come every afternoon to spend the day with me. I’d introduce him around as my husband; no one batted an eye. I never imagined we’d see this happen.
“Any leadership skills I may possess came from this club that dared not speak its name and that constituted the center of my world.”
Anita Bryant was spewing vitriol, Harvey Milk was murdered in November 1978, and six months later I was ostracized and driven out of my company when I was seen on the evening news speaking at a gay rights rally.
I arrived at HBS in 1980. There seemed to be no one like me—a lefty, feminist English major, and most of all, gay—in this conservative, straight white male world, with a not insignificant contingent of what was referred to as the “3Ms”: military, Mormons, and McKinsey. I lived in fear that my true identity would be discovered.
The Gay Students Association (GSA) got me through. We were deeply underground because we had to be, but every month we had a party, often with dancing, and it was joyous. In the spring term of my first year, the alumni group started up an annual potluck in New York City, and 10 or 12 of us would drive down to meet 60 to 70 wonderful, accomplished gay and lesbian alums. I was co-president of the GSA my second year, and after graduating I organized 15 of the NYC annual potlucks and served as both president and co-president of the alumni group. HBS, with its many clubs and opportunities, is all about leadership. Any leadership skills I may possess came from this club that dared not speak its name and that constituted the center of my world.
We had a lot of losses in the club from HIV/AIDS, and I’d like to say their names: My friends Jeff Eisberg (MBA 1979), one of our founding members; Bart Rubenstein (MBA 1979); Raul Companioni (MBA 1980); Bob Anderson (MBA 1982); Jim Savage (MBA 1977); Paul Williamson (MBA 1983); and Phil Kanner, life partner of my dear friend Steve Mendelsohn (MBA 1984).
We also lost Harley Uhl (MBA 1975); Philip Burkett (MBA 1976); Frank La Penta (MBA 1977); Dan Brandeberry (MBA 1978); Joe Hilliard (MBA 1978); Mark Landsberger (MBA 1978); Rob Rosecrans (MBA 1979); Peter Hollinger, M.D., partner of Jon Zimman (MBA 1980); Michael Russell (MBA 1980); James Janke (MBA 1980); Ric Angulo (MBA 1983); John Kemp (MBA 1981); Fred Mann (MBA 1983); Ravenell “Ricky” Keller (MBA 1989); and Richard Zayas (MBA 1996). These are only the ones about whom we know. I found out about Ric Angulo when I went to Central Park to see the AIDS quilt in 1988 and saw his name. He had only just died. Someone had written, “Ric, I wish we’d known.”
To be thrust into the HBS community was quite different. A couple of times when signs went up for our LGBTQ club meetings, people wrote “fa----” on them. When I graduated college, I didn’t feel there were any limitations to what I could do, but I regressed on that front after HBS. I had worked at BCG before HBS, but I decided not to go back there and I decided not to interview with companies like Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, and McKinsey. HBS heightened my fear around being gay in the business world. I felt it would be damaging to my career to be found out, so I limited myself to creative industries where I thought my gayness would be more acceptable if revealed.
I worked at Apple for five years at the twilight of my career, and in 2015 I participated for the first time in the pride parade. There I was, walking down the streets of San Francisco with my partner and with 1,200 other LGBTQ employees from Apple. Suddenly I thought of the trajectory of my career, how it had started and how much the world had changed since. I started to cry right then and there. I couldn’t believe that 30 years before, I was a fearful participant in the business world, plagued by the thought of being outed. But on that day, I was marching in the parade as an openly gay person, with people screaming enthusiastically at us from the sidelines. I was working for one of the most successful companies in the world where the CEO is openly gay, and no one cared a bit. I wrote Tim Cook a letter the next day to share my experience. He was as moved as I was.
They weren’t willing to say that there’s gay people here, but everyone needed a place to be themselves. I didn’t have the courage to be completely out at HBS, though I remember saying to myself, “Goddammit, I’m smart enough to be able to thrive notwithstanding what some people are going to say.” I became co-president in my second year, and we decided to change the name to the Gay Students Association. I wanted to approach the administration to be an approved group, but I didn’t have the guts. (Jon Zimman [MBA 1980] had attempted to “legitimize” the group the year before.) As a young alum, I went to the New York gay alumni group’s meetings for quite a few years. In 1982 or 1983, I remember being one of three people carrying an HBS banner in the gay pride parade. We were proud to do it.
“I assured them I was a lesbian, and I wasn’t there to out them. That’s what the climate was like at the time.”
One Friday night, when I wasn’t up for drinking at the straight bars, I got the courage to call the number for the Gay and Lesbian Students Association (GLSA) and asked if they were meeting. “We’d love to have you,” a voice on the phone said. As I walked across the bridge in freezing snow, I almost turned back. But I trudged on and rang the doorbell, and the man who matched the voice on the phone welcomed me. When I stepped inside, someone shouted, “Annette!” I looked around and saw one of my professors, Willis Emmons (MBA 1985). Someone else gasped, and a few people looked extremely nervous. I realized they were terrified that I was one of the undercover writers of the Gang of Nine, who wrote the anonymous gossip column for the Harbus. I assured them I was a lesbian, and I wasn’t there to out them. That’s what the climate was like at the time.
The connection to fellow alumni of the GLSA has proven to be lifelong. There’s a deeper layer of connection with people who’ve gone through similar experiences, and to have that bond mashed together with the aspiration of being business leaders—that’s been the foundational strength in my career. I came out in my first job interview in 1990. When the owner of the company asked if I had any other questions, I made clear that insurance coverage for my domestic partner was a condition of my employment, which wasn’t really done then. Had I not had the fortitude of friends, and the HBS GLSA network, I don’t think I’d have been as strong of a person entering the workforce as I was.
—Annette Friskopp (MBA 1990), coauthor of Straight Jobs, Gay Lives: Gay and Lesbian Professionals, the Harvard Business School, and the American Workplace (1995) with Sharon Silverstein (MBA 1990)
This wasn’t long before Clinton’s Don’t Ask Don’t Tell policy, when the political climate at the time was very much: “Keep your homosexuality to yourself.” Fortunately, I made friends with the half-dozen club members as well as off-campus friends who were accepting. They were my salvation. I was just so happy to meet other gay people, and to go out dancing at the gay clubs that existed in Cambridge. The meetings were a chance to talk about classes, talk about our professors—the kinds of things I thought would happen in the section. I’ve never been to any class reunions; I haven’t communicated with anyone in my section; and I actually haven’t thought about these things for decades. But just in the past few months, I decided to write to my class secretary for the first time, to say that Bruce and I are celebrating 40 years together and our fifth wedding anniversary. I wanted to announce our happiness.
After a number of unfortunate incidents in class occurred, I remember sitting in this apartment and saying, “This is terrible, but we’re learning so much great stuff in marketing and strategy. Let’s use what we’re learning to come up with a communication strategy targeting different segments.” We drafted a booklet that answered a lot of challenging questions about what it means to be gay, and the administration agreed to produce 1,000 of them. They were distributed to every student. That’s also how people found out about the Audiotext hotline.
The technology for the hotline was fairly limited, but a person could call in and get prerecorded information about being gay at a time when there was nowhere to go for information. Fortune magazine did this huge story about gay people in corporate America in December 1991. It was the first time many people saw the words gay and corporate America in the same sentence. The reporters called me about this Audiotext hotline that I’d started, and that led to an article in Time magazine called “Three-Dollar Bills,” by Andy Tobias (MBA 1972), in March 1992. We’d had maybe 300 phone calls to the Audiotext hotline before the article; after that, we got 3,000 within a week. What blew me away were the messages that people left, saying how it had changed their lives. I went from figuring out that I was gay to coming out to 22 million people, and all because of the GLSA. It was terrifying and thrilling, because I really believed in what we were doing. I felt so lucky to be at HBS, and that HBS could support this, whereas other people didn’t have an HBS behind them.
—Jonathan Rotenberg (MBA 1992)
The club played a powerful role in smoothing that transition to life at HBS. It was a way to connect with other people, make friends, and talk about our feelings in that environment, which was almost suffocating. Some of it may have been misperceived, because it was a fairly conservative, Wall Street crowd, and I didn’t see anyone out and proud. It felt like we were an unseen minority among the student body. Having been back to HBS to attend events with current students, it’s gratifying to see the huge advances that have been made for LGBTQ acceptance and that students can be comfortable with who they are today. If you’re not comfortable with yourself, then you’re not able to get everything out of the HBS experience. A big part of the value of HBS comes from forging relationships, building a network, and that means being able to be open with one’s peers. Plus this openness ultimately strengthens the institution.
I wasn’t out in the Navy, but that year at Oxford I decided I didn’t want to live with a split brain anymore. I decided I could be out at work, in life, at school, everything. So after break I went back to the Navy and told my commanding officer, which prompted them to discharge me. A couple months later, someone at the Pentagon decided they should collect my college tuition: $51,000. That was a transformative experience for me. It played out in the New York Times and USA Today. There were calls for kicking ROTC off campus at Harvard and MIT. I didn’t want that to happen, but it did make me a champion for gay rights. There was no way that I wasn’t going to be out when I landed on campus in 1994. I came with that intention, to normalize being “out” in an organized way. Within weeks of arriving, a few of us, including John Barabino (MBA 1996), got the idea to leave National Coming Out Day stickers on every desk in all the classrooms with a one-page explanation of the day and what the sticker represented. About half the campus wore the sticker, which signaled, “I’m ok with you being gay.” We thought that with more visibility, we could help make it a safer place to come out.
I think the words the Dean used were to the effect of, “You have to invest in each other.” I’m from a very conservative environment in Mexico; I wasn’t out to my family yet, and there was a lot of trepidation as to how I would navigate that. After a couple of weeks, I decided to come out to my section and was disappointed that some people who’d been friendly with me cooled after that. Others were supportive. Luckily, I ended up sitting next to someone in my first year who became a close friend. Together with another friend, we led the Gay, Lesbian, and Bisexual Student Association (GLBSA) during our second year, which was a tight-knit group of about 15 members. We objected to President Larry Summers’s decision to allow military recruiters on campus, since they banned gays or lacked non-discrimination protections for gays.
In my 25 years in corporate America, I’ve seen a positive evolution, but more work remains. I’ve been with my husband for over 18 years, and when people see my ring, many ask about my wife. I simply reply that my husband is from Australia. Most people take it in stride. Most large companies now have policies to provide protection for LGBTQI+ employees. But getting ahead often requires building personal relationships, and that’s where I feel there may still be some hidden homophobia. I hope that becomes a thing of the past as new business leaders continue to drive positive change.
—Javier Bordes-Posadas (MBA 2004)
When I got to campus, I organized a pizza night for the WTGNC [women, trans, and gender nonconforming] contingent of the RCs. About 15 people showed up—and that’s where I met all my closest friends. The WTGNC contingent came from a desire to make sure there’s a community within PRIDE for folks who experience marginalization as a result of their gender identity. This year, about 75 of the 195 members of PRIDE are WTGNC.
PRIDE is really about creating community for people who are marginalized in society and in the business world. It’s a space where people can gather and share and be parts of themselves that they cover or don’t feel comfortable sharing at HBS. For me it shows how important it is to have affinity groups and spaces to bring people together around identity and shared experience. It’s really been home for me at HBS.
Next year, HBS is launching Leading as an LGBTQ+ Executive, the School’s first program tailored to this community. Professor Frances Frei, who was the first and only out tenured member of the faculty for 10 years, says it took her “five seconds” to agree to participate—then another five seconds to get Professor Caroline Elkins and Assistant Professor Edward Chang on board to develop the curriculum for this Executive Education program. It will feature new cases, as well as in-person visits by US Senator Tammy Baldwin, actress Anna Deavere Smith, and designer Debbie Millman, with a focus on authentic storytelling and the latest research on difference and inclusion. Frei says she hopes it will serve as an accelerant—personally and professionally—for those who attend. “This is a group that’s had to be so resilient. It’s also a group that gets the power of community personally, but they haven’t had a chance to come together and to focus unapologetically on business. That’s a beautiful place for education,” Frei says.
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