Out for Undergrad to Merge Legacy O4U Tech and O4U Marketing Under New Leadership
Out for Undergrad (O4U) announces the merger of its Tech and Marketing Conferences in New York September 28 — October 1, 2023.
The merger follows an extended period of due diligence during the pandemic and reflects the O4U Board’s strategic decision to increase touch points for students and corporate recruiters at the intersection of these industries that is now driven by digital experience. The combined conferences will operate under the acronym O4UD for business purposes. The branded name for marketing and communication purposes will be determined in a collaborative process over the next few months.
Heath Clayton, Chair of the O4U Board of Directors and Head of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion at JP Morgan Chase Consumer and Community Bank said, “We believe this merger will help us in supporting corporations achieve even greater LGBTQ2+ and non-white representation across the technology and marketing sectors. This conference will bring together an even more diverse O4U class of high-achieving students than in the past. Our 2022 student cohort of almost 1000 students had 68% representing one or more non-white race and a non-white ethnic group and 17% identified as TGNC.”
Annie Schugart, Product Manager at Google, member of the Google News team, recently Head of Product at Column and Rishi Mittal, Senior Associate, Business Operations and Strategy at Google and formerly Strategy and Operations Consultant at Deloitte have been appointed Co-Directors of O4UD. Both are long-tenured O4U volunteers who distinguished themselves as students at Harvard and Penn State respectively. They have unique backgrounds and expertise that they bring to the merger, including their O4U involvement, combined bench strength of 17 years.
Before Google, Annie spent three years building Column from inception to a platform serving 200+ communities with media partners including The Washington Post. Annie served as a Director on the O4UT team in 2022.
Currently, Rishi helps Alphabet/Google’s senior executives navigate the intersections between technology. In 2017, Consulting Magazine recognized him as one of the “35 Under 35 Rising Stars of the Industry”.
Annie said, “I am thrilled to work with the O4U team to reimagine an entirely new, innovative conference experience this year. I know firsthand that O4U truly does change lives, and this year’s conference will be an opportunity to further this impact on students, sponsors and mentors alike.”
Rishi said, “I am so excited to work with Annie to bring this merger to life! Tech & Marketing are now more connected than ever. Our students will be most successful when they recognize and apply this phenomenon. O4U has a long-lived history of providing life changing experiences. That will not change and we hope this merger will make those experiences even better.”
Cindi Love, Executive Director of O4U said, “The reason for our merger is simple. We want to create maximum leverage for our students and sponsors during one of the most disruptive times in the history of the Tech and Marketing industries. Disruption is the heartbeat of innovation and we believe it is the ideal time for O4U to cross pollinate our students, conferences and employers into one high demand location, take advantage of the employment trends in both sectors to expand our reach and increase ROI for sponsors. The recruiting industry is also in a sea change. We are committed to continuing to build the pathway and pipeline through which our extraordinary students get great jobs and in which they can partner with their employers in creating a future where delineated rights are not abstractions or aspirations, but realities.”
An Advisory Board of former and current senior volunteer leaders of O4U has been appointed with Michael Hamamoto Tribble as Chair, tasked with leading the Board in its charge to provide strategic guidance and recommendations to the co-directors of O4U Digital.
In his role at Google, Michael serves as a member of the strategic leadership team for Google’s consumer technology product portfolio. Prior to that, he led Google Cloud’s Datasets program where he worked with large enterprises like WPP, one of the world’s largest advertising agencies, to derive insights and analysis from Google Search Trends. Before that, he headed Google Cloud’s education strategy and was recognized by Forbes as a 30 Under 30 listmaker. He holds a Bachelor’s degree from Stanford University and a Master’s from Loyola Marymount University.
Michael said, “In a world where much of the technology skillset is shifting towards no-code or lowcode technologies and creativity and innovation are being privileged, this merger of our O4U Tech and Marketing conferences could not come at a better time. We’re seeing this shift with the proliferation of creative technologies like Canva or with the announced $20B acquisition of Figma by Adobe. Every creative agency and marketing company is now a technology company and there has never been a more exciting time to be at this intersection.”
Members at-large of the Advisory Board are: Alex Call, Senior Manager, Loyalty Strategy, Expedia Group; Christian Cortes, Engagement Manager at Prophet; Chandra Sahu, Shopping Strategy and Ops at Pinterest and former Director of O4UM; Tyler Lawrence, Senior Success Manager, High Touch Accounts, Strategic Industries at Slack and former Director of O4UT; Anne Schwartz, Vice President DEI, Consumer and Community Bank, JP Morgan Chase and former Director of O4UT; John Gabriel D’Angelo, Senior Software Engineer Google; Ji Hyun, Manager HBO Max and 2022 O4UT Director; Julia Baldaro, Brand Manager General Mills and 2022 O4UM Director; Julian Turner, Business Ops and Strategy Associate Shopify and 2022 Director of O4UE and Maggie Moss, Lateral Partner and Counsel Recruiting, Shearman and Sterling and former Director of O4UM.
O4U’s mission is to help high achieving LGBTQ2+ undergraduates achieve their full potential. Approaching its 20th anniversary of operation in 2024, O4U was founded by two Cornell students who recognized the need to eliminate discrimination against LGBTQ2+ people in corporate recruitment and to encourage undergraduates to live authentically and bring their full selves to work. O4U has two full time employees who support 110 or more volunteers in the design and implementation of its conferences and programs each year. Many O4U volunteers are graduates of O4U Conferences and recognized emerging leaders within their respective employers. The majority describe their O4U experiences as life changing and their connection to the O4U community as a critical part of their acquisition of their first job and network for accessing later jobs as well.
There are more than 7,000 graduates of O4U Conferences in Engineering, Tech, Marketing and Business. All student costs for attendance are fully underwritten by O4U with the support of 201 of the largest and leading corporations in the USA. For the past 8 years, Goldman Sachs has hosted the O4U Business Conference at its New York offices. Horizon Media was the host of the 2022 O4U Marketing Conference and Emerson hosted O4U’s Mosaic program in Minnesota in 2022. Mosaic began in 2020 at O4UB and is O4U’s pre-conference leadership development experience focused on enhancing the personal and professional lives of students identifying as Black, Native / Indigenous, and/or Transgender / Gender Nonconforming / Non-Binary (TGNCNB).
Sponsors support all O4U students in a variety of ways: providing host sites, underwriting events and student transportation and lodging. In addition, sponsors provide time for their employees who identify as LGBTQ2+ to participate in O4U mentoring programs and match employee donations.
Cindi Love continued: “By merging our conferences, we bring together sponsors and candidates who represent desirable hires based on talent and diversity metrics and who have the combined marketing/tech skills and mindset. Additionally, we reduce sponsors’ aggregate costs for attending multiple conferences while expanding our programming to year-round touch points in the O4U Learning Community, the O4U Job Board and our on-going mentoring program. The next decade will demand the very best of our sponsors and us. We believe that this new conference brings opportunity for innovation that can be a reciprocal and iterative process where our sponsors and all of us learn together and meet the demands of the future in recruiting and diversification of the workforce.”
