Columbia Business School Tops LGBT Rights Initiative: MBA News

By Tim Dhoul Updated Aug 15, 2014

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Culture of inclusiveness central to Friendfactor challenge

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A year-long LGBT rights challenge designed to instill a greater sense of inclusiveness on the campuses of leading business schools in the US has reached its conclusion, with Columbia Business School coming out on top.

For its efforts in engaging the student body through a series of LGBT rights initiatives (known as ‘ally’ activities) which run over the course of an academic year, Columbia Business School placed ahead of 11 other leading US institutions, including the Kellogg School of Management and Ross School of Business in second and third place respectively.

“We were able to engage 60% of our student body through 10 ally activities, which sparked a great conversation around diversity and inclusion at the school,” said Ted Kirby, co-chair of Columbia Business School’s ‘Cluster Q’ LGBT club, which led the school's winning efforts.

Culture of inclusiveness central to Friendfactor challenge

The MBA Ally Challenge is run by the non-profit organization, Friendfactor. It wants to foster greater awareness of LGBT rights and a more welcoming environment at business schools because of the knock-on effect this can yield when the next generation of leaders graduates to positions where it can influence corporate culture’s stance on inclusiveness.

Across the 12 participating schools, more than 4,000 MBA students took part in around 100 ally activities. The campaign looks to be having an impact on the sense of inclusiveness felt by LGBT students at these schools – the proportion of LGBT students who reported feeling comfortable in being open about their sexuality or status rose from 42% to 62%, a much higher number than the national workplace average of 47% in the US, according to figures from the Human Rights Campaign.

You can learn more about Friendfactor and other LGBT rights campaigns at business schools here.

Friendfactor launched a workplace version of its LGBT rights challenge in January. Buoyed by the positive reception for the business school edition – which attracted 12 of the biggest names in the US in only its second year – Friendfactor secured eight Fortune 500 companies to take up the inaugural Workplace Ally Challenge, including Bank of America and Pfizer. The results of their attempts to improve the levels of inclusiveness felt by their staff over six months will be available in July.

Written by

Tim Dhoul

Tim is a writer with a background in consumer journalism and charity communications. He trained as a journalist in the UK and holds degrees in history (BA) and Latin American studies (MA).