How Career Services Can Support LGBTQIA+ Students

Ashley Safranski:

Welcome, everyone. My name’s Ashley Safranski. I lead marketing here at uConnect. Really appreciate everyone carving time out of the day to join us. I know that October and just fall in general is a crazy busy time in career services. So if you’ve had your career fairs, I hope they went amazing and had a great turnout. And if you have not yet done that, I hope planning is going well and that will be success.

I’m excited to be joined by my new friends, Amanda Zielinski Slenski, and Suede Graham of Out for Undergrad. And we’re going to dig into some of the best practices for career teams who are looking to up their support for their LGBTQ students on their campuses. Out for Undergrad is actually one of our headline partners here at uConnect for our curation kit that’s focused on supporting that student population. So very thankful and grateful to have you both, Amanda and Suede. Amanda, I’m going to start with you and maybe you can kick off introductions on your side.

Amanda Zielinski Slenski:

Awesome. Hi, everyone. Thank you so much for joining us. As Ashley mentioned, my name is Amanda, my pronouns are she, her. I serve Out for Undergrad as the chief of staff. Out for Undergrad is very unique in the fact that we are almost exclusively volunteer run. Suede, who you’ll meet in a moment, is one of our volunteers. So I am one of just two staff members.

So Out for Undergrad is a nonprofit organization that supports LGBTQ+ undergraduate students through personal and professional development opportunities. We’re very well known for our in-person conference programs, which are completely free of charge to students and offer times and ways to connect for job and internship placement and then also just a professional development curriculum for students.

My career before Out for Undergrad was actually all in higher education. I actually ran a career services office for a while, and my last stop was as a vice president enrollment and special assistant to the president at a small private liberal arts college in Michigan, and I am still based in Michigan. I saw some folks from my home state in the chat, so glad to have you all here from the Midwest.

So we are very excited to talk a little bit more about the work that we do and how we support students and how that translates to the work that you do as well. Suede, do you want to go ahead and introduce yourself?

Suede Graham:

Yes. Hello, everybody. Happy Wednesday. My name is Suede Graham. I use he, him, his pronouns. Oftentimes, you might hear Amanda or other volunteers who are part of Out for Undergrad refer to Out for Undergrad as our slay job. But my day job is I primarily focus on diversity and inclusion at an investment bank here in New York City. But my slay job is I serve as the co-lead, one of the co-lead directors for the 2025 Out for Undergrad Business Conference.

So to give you sort of a little bit about what Out for Undergrad and sort of the makeup and so our volunteer structure. So I serve as the lead for the business conference. I help co-manage a team of about 20 people who will host a larger conference in March focused on connecting students with business, finance, and business industries in and of itself. But we also host a digital conference that is actually being hosted next week. And that focuses on jobs that are in the digital media space. And we also have an engineering and a live sciences conference, and those just wrapped about two weeks ago and they were wonderful.

But like Amanda said, our organization is completely run by volunteers. So these are all people who primarily went through Out for Undergrad as students and then they just received so much from the organization that they decided to give back and give back their time. So it’s been a really cool, unique opportunity now as a professional to see the wonderful, amazing work that the organization does on the backside.

Ashley Safranski:

Amazing. Thank you both for the great introduction and again, just so grateful to have you and to dig into the discussion. Before I jump into, I have a list of questions that I want to ask Amanda and Suede. For context, always, if you’ve come to these webinars before, I think it’s important to provide the context.

UConnect, we’re focused on really helping our career services partners consolidate the wide range of resources that they offer to students and try to provide that curated, self-guided experience for students based on how students identify, their interests, their academic pursuits, circumstances, so forth. So one of the ways, there’s lots that schools are using uConnect, one of the ways that we are helping our partners support LGBTQI students is through our curation kit. And I just want to show this really quickly as an example, and I think we have someone from Emanuel College on, so thank you. This is a great highlight.

So this is their community page. And they’re leveraging the uConnect curation kit, which is providing just a ton of content from different partners like Out for Undergrad, so that LGBTQ students can come here and just really take advantage of resources that are meant to support them. So we have events, we have videos, different organizations, clubs and associations, other resources, so here’s a great one for Out for Undergrad, articles, featured classes, mentors, and organizations.

So a lot of great content that is meant to just, you just turn it on and it all comes in. So we know that there’s a lot of content out there and we’re just trying to take the lift off of you. So I wanted to provide that context.

And I think we’re good to jump into the questions. So a good place to start I think is maybe we can dig into some of the unique challenges that LGBTQ students might encounter during their career exploration process and that what should career services teams be aware of? Maybe that’s a good question to kick us off.

Amanda Zielinski Slenski:

I think that’s a great question, Ashley, and I think it’s one of the questions that we get the most from students. So one of the very unique things about Out for Undergrad, it is a completely queer space. So all of our volunteers, everyone who’s attending as a sponsor, all the students are part of the LGBT+ community. For some students, it’s the first time they’ve ever really tried out some of their authentic pieces of themselves, whether that’s names, pronouns, attire, ways of communicating with folks, sharing their story.

So what that really does for students is sometimes open up a door to really talk about themselves in a different way than they’ve done before. What that then sparks and spurs for them is really questions about how often they should do that, how much they should share, how much they should disclose. And those are the questions that we really get the most of from students.

So I think when thinking about students in the career exploration process, especially students in the LGBT+ community, how you can support them the most is really talking with them, giving them examples, and helping to support them in living authentically as themselves. There really is no set framework for that journey for a student, and it really has to be their story that they’re writing.

We talk often about the cost of covering. So there are times and situations when a student would not want to be out regardless of where they’re at in their journey. And in that framework, that’s okay. That’s a choice that they’re making, but you want it to be a conscious choice that you’re making and a decision you’re making that still allows you to be authentic and true to yourself.

So we really like to have open conversations with students, ask them a lot of open-ended questions. We find mentorship to be the most impactful. So if you can find a mentor for students and really pair them up with an alum who is a member of the community as well, that goes a really long way. You also could ask, with any of your corporate organizations that you’re working with, if they have someone from an employee resource group, like a Pride resource group that would be willing to come and talk to students. You can also ask them about what resources that they have for employees that your students might be able to read or utilize. So there really are a lot of ways that you can help bridge that gap and be that connection for students.

And I think just keeping an open conversation as much as possible. Doing things like safe zone training so that you can publicly display that you’re a safe space for folks to come out to and have these conversations can go a long way. And that training, by the way, is completely free of charge. So you can go and get that training either through your school, a lot of schools do it, or you can get it on your own. So just having open conversation goes a really long way.

And then also connecting them with resources and with other people can be extremely helpful. But the more open you are to the conversation and just admitting when you don’t know something and saying to a student, “I’m happy to find a connection for you,” is truly, I think, the best step you can take as you’re supporting students through that journey.

Ashley Safranski:

Awesome. I think that’s a great way to kick off. I know you and I were chatting yesterday in our prep call, there’s not always a best practice and that’s okay. Yeah, I think that’s important. Maybe what are some of the specific, getting to the specifics, specific barriers or biases that the student population might face during interviews or internships? And how can career services teams support or coach these students?

Suede Graham:

Yeah, so I’m happy to take this one. So I think many of the barriers and biases that queer folks might experience outside of work, stereotyping, discrimination, microaggressions, those types of things, those also show up in the workplace during the interview process and during networking as well.

So to get a little specific, stereotyping, for example, there might be someone that they might be networking that might have some sort of preconceived notions about the LGBTQ community and that can affect their judgment and that can lead to a bias and how they are navigating that interaction. I think as well as what Amanda mentioned a while ago, discrimination, microaggressions, some of these can manifest as comments that are unintentional, but there’s always the intent versus the impact and what that might mean and how that might make the student feel.

We also talk about lack of representation. So whenever a student is going through the interview process or navigating trying to land their first job, they also might not really see themselves and the people that they’re talking with. So that might be something that really weighs on them and affects their confidence as they’re going into these spaces.

And then also I think another thing that, another barrier might be the disclosure and the pressure to disclose your identity and how you identify. I think that as queer people, sometimes we do wear our identities on our sleeves and we wear them with pride, of course. But also, we might receive some pressures to share a little bit more about ourselves that we may not want to, so students might experience that.

And then that leads into the next point about fear of repercussions. Concerns about how their identity may affect their career prospects and that can really lead to high amounts of anxiety during the interview process, during networking and things like that.

I think on the point about how career centers can support LGBTQ+ students, I think it really goes into the training for your staff and your employees. I think that if you are participating in inclusive training practices, if you are hosting or working through unconscious bias trainings, that’s really great. Mock interviews, these are very, very important and this is something that we also incorporate into a lot of our programming that we do for Out for Undergrad. So asking them about their real world experiences, offer practice interviews, that can really help them rehearse how they might handle specific questions regarding not only the work, but also their identity. So you can coach them through that.

I think also connecting them with resource groups and employee groups, mentorship programs. If queer people see themselves and if they’re connected with people that are like them, they’re more likely to have more success as they navigate those processes. So as a career center, if you have anyone in your network or at your organization or institution that openly identifies as queer and might be able to give them some professional guidance, that’s also super, super helpful.

And then like I said a while ago, interview coaching, but also resume coaching and walking them through how they can highlight their skills, qualifications and just also be able to highlight their skill sets rather than their identities. I think that that’s super, super important.

Ashley Safranski:

I know I showed that example of Emanuel College, but I think just a great, as a career leader, not having to be the expert in every scenario and situation, but often it’s like you’re the facilitator, right? You’re like the quarterback and being that… Trying to connect students with the right resources at the right time, based on a variety of things. And a lot of what you just said, mentors and articles and videos and just best practices, there’s a lot out there. So I think that’s a great way that career services teams can definitely help. Thank you for all of that. Suede. Anything to add Amanda?

Amanda Zielinski Slenski:

I would just echo the piece that Suede mentioned about representation mattering. So there is so little representation of the LGBT+ community at the top level of companies. We truly take an approach of classroom to boardroom where we’re actually working collaboratively with organizations like ours, from the time a student is in their undergraduate experience, ideally until they get into the boardroom.

But last I checked, there are like four openly gay CEOs in the country. So they don’t see representation in a very public way as much as some other identities may be seen at those higher levels. It’s like less than 1% of board members in the entire Fortune 500 are LGBTQ+ identified and publicly identified in that way.

And part of that is whether folks are out or not out and completely understanding that, but regardless, you’re not going to be able to see in the same way that shared identity at the highest levels of leadership at the company’s organizations that they’re looking to work at. So what we try to do is find folks at all levels of leadership that are especially on an upward trajectory where our students can connect and see someone with those shared identities and the intersectional identities that are so important to them succeeding in the workplace. So it all plays into exactly what Suede was sharing, but just to highlight how low the representation truly is for students who are really looking to see that shared identity piece, especially about being members of the community.

Ashley Safranski:

That’s a great addition and actually, I’m going to skip ahead because it really plays well into another question that I wanted to ask. What advice would you give LGBTQ+ students regarding identifying inclusive and affirming employers? Are there particular resources or platforms that can assist or just general advice?

Amanda Zielinski Slenski:

I think that Suede will really be best to answer this broadly, but I will say a lot of it is an art more than a science. So talking with folks tends to be the number one best way to really get those pieces known. And then the other piece that I always suggest to students and then I’ll let Suede dive deeper into all of this, but another thing that I suggest to students is pay attention to the smaller things that they do, like what questions do they ask on their application? What kinds of benefits do they offer within their employee benefit package? What types of employee resource groups do they have? Where are they investing their dollars? All those things can really help.

Suede, do you want to share more? You have much more in-depth knowledge of this as a recruiter.

Suede Graham:

Yes, I echo everything that Amanda just said, but I think something else that I would like to highlight. So I do have recruiting experience and something that I really advise specifically queer students to think about when working and looking at organizations that they might be interested in or opportunities that they come across, I would really do the research on their diversity inclusion policies. Like Amanda said, talking about the benefits and what they might have.

Also, even though we all have a love-hate relationship with social media, it’s so integral to just a lot of who we are and just [inaudible 00:17:19] society. Look at their social media page. Look at how a lot of organizations will have global diversity sort of awareness campaigns. They’ll highlight different diversity holidays. Are they highlighting holidays that have to do with the LGBTQ+ community? Look at how they are also having an online presence around diversity and inclusion. I know for a lot of students who work in business and those industries, there are reports and surveys and company reviews and writing resources that evaluate how they might support or don’t support diversity inclusion, and that’s something that students can utilize as a resource as well.

I think something that career services staff can do to help students navigate these processes and just be a particular resource is helping students curate and craft intentional questions to ask as they are interviewing and taking part in their networking and interview process, helping them to craft questions around the culture, around what programs do they have that support the ERGs and diversity inclusion and things that really indicate that the workplace is a very inclusive environment.

Amanda Zielinski Slenski:

And I’ll pop in the chat, there are a couple of resources that we share with students. One is the HRC Corporate Equality Index, which all these things have goods and bads, just saying. Everything has layers to it. So that’s one place where students can look and see how folks are rated within the HRC index.

Window is a newer organization that does not just do diversity and inclusion. It also looks at sustainability, climate change issues, things of that nature. But folks can actually search to see response from companies in terms of social equity types of thing.

And then on our site, our job board and actually our learning community is also open access. So there is priority for O for U folks as they apply through the job board, but you actually can go in and see the different organizations that are supporting Out for Undergrad on our website too. And then you can see folks that are investing in us.

And then our partner organizations as well. We work with a partner called Out Leadership, which would not be a great fit for your students. They really work far more with folks later in the process of their career. But that, for example, is a great resource to also see who’s sponsoring them. So the folks that are sponsoring them are committing those dollars. And to me, you invest where you really are pulled and drawn and that is mission and vision alignment. And yes, all those links can be shared, for sure.

Ashley Safranski:

Okay. Thanks for sharing those. And I’ll save those links and we’ll include them in the follow-up email as well. So no need to copy and paste or write things down right now. Kind of like a bigger, broader question I think, Suede, this one might be for you. How can career services teams tailor their programming and resources to meet the broad needs of LGBTQ+ students?

Suede Graham:

Yeah, so I think a lot of the things that our conferences do for the LGBTQ, for the students that attend our conferences, I think that the career centers can sort of take some notes and do them on a obviously much smaller scale. But I think some of the things that we do, we have different workshops and seminars throughout our conferences. These are really focused on career development, but then also really help students navigate inclusion, workplace inclusion, handling hard hitting conversations and situations that they might endure during their interview process, during their internships, et cetera.

Having different guest speakers as part of your career center programming and ensuring that some of them are queer, I think that was super great because that would be just another additional resource that those students could have.

Networking events with other employers as well. I think something that you shared earlier, Ashley, and seeing that portal that had all those resources and that linked to all these resources that were specifically targeting LGBTQ+ students, those are great. Whether that might be you’re linking them to a link tree or a job board or something like that, having something that is specifically on your career center websites that is specifically targeting for queer students, I think that’s great.

I think another thing that we do in our conferences that you might be able to incorporate in your programming, we are always reading through and sifting through, evaluating and assessing our student feedback. After every single conference, we will send students pretty excessive feedback surveys just because we want to continue to grow our conference and just ensure that we are better serving our students in the best way possible. So it’s the job of the conference team to assess how the students enjoyed or did not enjoy our conference and then we learned from that, and then try to incorporate that feedback into next year’s programming. Because like I said, that helps us be in the know of the ever-changing needs of students and what they’re going through. So I definitely think assessing and asking for either real life or post-programming feedback on your queer-specific events and programs, it’s a good resource as well.

Ashley Safranski:

I like that, just ask. It’s a good place to start. And then yeah, I think the curating specific resources and content definitely makes sense.

Along kind of the similar vein, I think, how can colleges and universities better integrate LGBTQ+ specific resources into career services? And what types of collaborations across campus or student groups, et cetera, would you recommend?

Amanda Zielinski Slenski:

So I will follow up on that one. Suede said two of my biggest recommendations within all of this, ask your students and then assess if what you’re doing is actually working, so that you’re not spending… A lot of career services are quite understaffed and overtaxed, so try not to spend time where it’s not really worthwhile. And then you can lean into organizations like ours to help carry that load for students as well.

A couple of things that I would really recommend in addition to that is we find that within our community that we serve, so we have about 8,000 alumni and we serve about 1,000 students a year to give you context in terms of size and scale, what we found from a lot of assessment is that the students that were not being served and didn’t have enough support, maybe I should say it that way, didn’t have enough support were our students who identified as Black, Latinx, Indigenous or Native. So we created additional programming for them through Mosaic. And then our transgender, gender non-conforming, and non-binary students, so CG and CNB students. So we created additional programming for them through Transcend.

So what I would recommend is thinking about intersectional identities within the community as well and being mindful of the fact that it is a different experience for a Black trans woman than a cisgender gay man who identifies as white. Those are different experiences. So I would really recommend looking for and seeking out programming that has an intersectional scope to it, so that folks can really find these support networks and representation that really matters so much as they’re developing in their career journeys.

Another thing that we found very successful in college campuses and we’ve helped a number of schools just by advising them on it, are gender-affirming closets. So many folks will have a career closet of some sort with professional clothing. And I’m a little saddened by how many JCPenney’s have closed, the brick and mortar stores because they used to do amazing programs with colleges where they would support students to get additional attire. But taking your career closet and having a gender-affirming aspect to it and making sure that that’s publicly known really can go a long way.

One thing I’ve also seen to be successful is a lot of folks will have resource pantries or food pantries on their campus that students are allowed to just go into and leave without a lot of monitoring. And if you have a gender-affirming closet or area where folks can really go and look at clothing and maybe try things on, having that be slightly anonymous or the option for it to be anonymous can really help students because they may not be at a point where they’re exactly sure where they want to be in terms of how they want to present themselves out into public, but they can have that space to try and to see what feels right and see what fits well for them. So those are a couple of really practical things that we find to be very helpful.

And really, I think another piece is leaning into other organizations. You don’t need to do this all on your own. So we’re a great example, Out for Undergrad’s a great example. We have a learning community, like I mentioned, that’s completely open. Our conferences are pretty selective just because we have a lot of interest, since they’re fully funded for students. So about 30 to 40% of students are admitted each year that apply. So our conferences are a fantastic resource, but we have other things as well.

So our mentorship program goes on all through the year. There’s three to four cohorts per year. That acceptance rate is much higher because we’re able to serve additional students in different capacities in different ways. So connecting them with programs like that through us are great programs for them to be a part of as well.

And we have things like a breakthrough speaker series that are open to the public where they can hear from C-suite folks from across the country that are a part of the community. So utilizing our resources to help supplement yours. You don’t need to create another event if we’re having one, come see it, because almost all of our stuff is virtual and open to folks to join.

There’s other organizations like oSTEM and ROMBA which will support students from very specific fields of study. And actually, I had a bigger list, but when I actually showed that little thing, there was a whole bunch listed that I didn’t have on my list, when you were looking at that curated content. So if a student comes to you and has specific industry interests and you literally go and Google that interest and LGBTQ+, you oftentimes find a place where you can connect with. But really, just helping the students be that connecting agent can go a long way and lean into us and others because we’re all happy to partner.

Ashley Safranski:

Any thoughts, or brainstorming hat on right now, there’s a lot of different departments across campus that students are engaging with. And career, at least at uConnect, and I think in the industry it’s like how can we enable and support others throughout campus to have great and meaningful and just great career conversations with students? Any ideas for collaborations or ways that career services can support or partner other departments across campus?

Amanda Zielinski Slenski:

Yeah, so this was my thing in my last role, and so a couple of things that I found that worked well for me and in that campus community. It was a smaller campus community, but I think it’s really translatable in terms of scale. It was a residential campus, [inaudible 00:28:50] that comes with some benefits in terms of student focus and students being really readily available on campus. But athletics became a humongous partner.

So you will be shocked at what folks will respond to when their coach reaches out, rather than a faculty member or staff member. So I would do trainings with athletic staff, so coaches all came together, that staff came together for a monthly meeting. So I would ask for time in that monthly meeting to give some tips and tricks and hand out flyers for folks to be able to give the consistent messaging and suggestions and support for students.

You also could think about academic partners. So, many academic areas will have people who are specifically helping students with internship placement especially or research placement. There’s usually a go-to faculty member that students will go to when they’re thinking about graduate school, internships, or fellowships, things of that nature. So connecting with those folks and helping them with providing resources, making sure that they have everyone’s contact information in career services, what their expertise may be, the types of students that they can best help. It’s a lot easier to say, “I think you should talk to Suede because he is very good at helping business students find internships,” then saying, “It would be great for you to talk to career services.”

So for example, I gave faculty a breakdown of staff and said, “Here’s who has expertise in this area. And I can help with anything broadly, but if you have a student who’s interested in these things, here are some folks that are great resources for them.” And they really appreciated that. That direct referral is a lot easier sometimes than the general referral for students.

I would also go, traditionally, a lot of career services and career development is under the student affairs umbrella, but I would really also look at student organizations. So talking with student organizations that are either doing career preparation work or identity specific work with students can be a great resource for folks. I am very active with fraternity and sorority life and so I’ve been an advisor for way too long and I love it, but for a very long time. And what I have really done with the folks that I advise is really saying to them, “Don’t ignore the resources that are available to you because there is not another time in your life where people are paid to help you get a job. There is an actual team of people that want to talk to you, want to help you, and their job is to help you get a job.”

When you’re 10 years from now, some career services are open to alumni, I’m not trying to minimize that, but 10 years down the road, you seek out people you can pay to do this stuff. So whether it’s reviewing your LinkedIn or really talking through interview prep, things of that nature. So I would really suggest some of those pieces too, like reaching out to student organizations and those leaders.

To me, communication is the biggest piece, and then making it easily accessible, bite-sized pieces that folks can really access and pass along to a student. Things like printing out little business cards with QR codes that get people right to their resources is a great way to connect them. Just small things that make it really tangible and easy to make those connections.

Ashley Safranski:

I know that a lot of our partners too are leveraging those community pages, like the Emanuel College page. So if you’re you’re staff member in a different department and a student approached, it’s like, “Hey, I have these questions and I identify as LGBTQ+,” it’s like, “Hey, I may not know all the answers, but I know I can go here and there’s tons of resources for different majors or identities, etc.” So I love just the communication and the partnerships emphasis. I think that’s really important.

How can career services professionals help students navigate disclosure decisions such as whether and when to come out to potential employers? And I think you’ve both kind of addressed this a little bit, but I think just to ask the question directly, as I’m assuming a lot of career coaches are getting questions like this frequently.

Amanda Zielinski Slenski:

I’m going to echo some of the stuff that Suede and I have already talked about and I will also share a bit of my own experience. So I am bisexual and so there are times where I’m going through this process where no one would know that I’m a member of the community unless I actively share it. And then there would be times where I go through the process where it’s very clear that I am a member of the community.

My approach, as I’ve gotten later in my career, is if you don’t want all of me to be a part of your company, then it’s not a good fit for me either. But when I was first coming out of undergraduate, my undergraduate school, I had nowhere to go unless I had a job and a paycheck. So although I very much wanted to find a good fit and I happily did, if I didn’t, I still needed a job and a paycheck. So I think a part of it has to do a little bit with where the students in their process, what they need to prioritize, a need, and that hierarchy of those needs.

So in an ideal world, students find a great fit company that culturally is a great fit for them and everything aligns and they can be their full authentic self and that is what we hope for and that we want. And [inaudible 00:34:09] that end goal in mind, but with really making sure that students have expectations, a little bit of level set expectations of saying there may be times in your life where you need to have one thing take precedent over the other. So if you’re in a place where ensuring that you have housing and a paycheck coming in is more critical than culture and corporate fit for you, then think about those priorities.

So I would have those conversations with students. I used to have students make a list of their top priorities and then have them rank them, and when it came to their next job or their job. So was it title? Was it pay? Was it location? And then rank them so that they could prioritize.

So if we’re talking about really finding the ideal world, you’re really looking for that fit, I would first get a sense and feel from the company, which is so much easier in today’s day and age than it ever was before. Like Suede mentioned, check their social media, check the diversity and inclusion pages, check the language that they’re using. So after the affirmative action case went through the Supreme Court, many companies started removing DEI language from their website. So the companies that are very committed to DEI work have maintained that language on their websites, have maintained public access to that information, and have kept those positions, those programs.

There are some large companies that it’s really more of a strategic or risk management shift that they’ve made. So that’s not the be all end. There are some large companies that have teams of lawyers that say, “This is not worth the risk, so go ahead and just adjust in this way.” But that can give you kind of an initial piece.

I really recommend taking a critical look at how they ask the questions on their application process. Most folks have an online application now. Things like preferred name, things like asking for pronouns, things like asking for other identities you may have, after they ask identity questions. Those are all great signs of saying this is a safer space for me to be fully and authentically me in whatever way I choose to show up. So those are the types of things that can really help.

If you can, I like to always suggest to students, you can go on LinkedIn and search your school and then a company and see the alumni working at that company. Send emails out to the folks that went to your school. When you say, “Hi, I’m a junior who’s at Wesleyan who really wants to talk to someone who works at Coca-Cola,” you’d be shocked that people will be like, “I’d love to talk to you because we have the same alma mater and you’re interested in my company.” So students having a conversation with someone can also go a long way.

So I would really coach them to read the room a little bit and have their own priorities. Anything else you would add to that, Suede? But those would be my two big things.

Suede Graham:

I was going to say also coaching them in sort of like a mock interview style, but also just coaching them on the questions that they can ask to ask about inclusion practices. So I think there’s an example of them saying inclusion is critically important to me when exploring what organization I work for, can you share with me the health benefits? Versus my boyfriend and I, we’d like to know more about what benefits your company has. So I think choosing what is your level of comfort, I think coaching students through those responses is a really good bit to add to their toolkit as well.

Ashley Safranski:

Love that. Love the mock interview. We’re kind of coming near the end of the questions that I have, so folks, please feel free to submit questions. I feel like this is putting a bow on at least our part of the discussion a little bit, but maybe you both can chime in. Broadly speaking, how just generally, how can career services staff help… How can they ensure that career services staff are providing affirming, inclusive support for LGBTQ+ students?

Amanda Zielinski Slenski:

My absolute number one, if you are a safe space for students to come out to and to have these conversations, be as public about it as you can be. If you are not, know that about yourself and know who to refer them to on campus. And that could be for lots of reasons. It could be things that are triggering for you. It could be that you just don’t know that you have enough knowledge, whatever it may be. But if you are a safe space for students, be very public, be very vocal, and be the voice that they most need to hear in that moment in their lives of a space where they can go and have these conversations.

That, to me, really removes so many barriers because if you are a safe space for folks to have these conversations and you have a willingness to admit when you don’t know and that you can help them to find the answer collaboratively, you will jump leaps and bounds for that student in terms of having a place where they can get to the next step collaboratively with someone that just has more experience and knowledge than they do. And you can work alongside them to really find the right things that they most need in that moment.

Suede Graham:

Yeah, I echo that and then I would also just say students, especially college-age students these days, they just want to be heard, they just want to be seen. So I think really taking into your work and into your practice just intersectional thinking because every single lived experience, every single, whether that’s from family or any other sort of experience they’ve had affects them in that way. And that can also shows up how they show up professionally.

I’m a huge proponent that sometimes the things that are affecting the outside of the four walls of your work or of your classroom or what have you, sometimes that does affect how you show up into the space. So really seeing and hearing and understanding the students that you’re working with and just asking about their wants and their needs in that moment, I think can go a very, very long way.

Ashley Safranski:

This is an Ashley question, but for you, Suede, what are… A lot of our career services teams, they sit right at the intersection of the students and the employers, the supply and demand, and there’s a lot of employers out there who I think want to do better and they want to be inclusive. Do you have any ideas or suggestions for how career services teams can coach up employers and how they can be… Are there resources or how they can be more inclusive in their recruitment and engaging with students?

Suede Graham:

Yeah, I guess really showing, if I’m understanding the question correctly, I think career centers, as you’re building these relationships with the organizations and employers that you’re bringing in for your career fairs, your presentations and all that, I think giving employers sort of an overlook of the student population that you’re working with or that you’re working with and serving. So really breaking down like, “Okay, today you’re going to be speaking with this group. This is sort of the demographic of who you’ll be speaking with.”

Because I think when it comes to diversity inclusion, I don’t think employers are very… They’re scared to say the wrong thing. And I think that even as people, we’re scared to say the wrong thing. So I think really preparing your employers with the students that they’re working with can go a long way. And I think that that could also allow the employers to come to those presentations and those [inaudible 00:41:22] chats and what have you with just the correct information and the right information that they want to ensure comes across to those students.

Ashley Safranski:

Yeah, that just came to me. I think that’s an important component to this. Again, please feel free to ask questions. I know there are a couple in the chat that I’ll ask here in a second.

Really quickly though, I just want to launch a quick poll question to just kind of understand if you’re interested in continuing the conversation with uConnect. We have the curation kit that I did highlight with Emanuel College that’s pulling together all of these different partners and different content types into a turnkey solution that you can turn on to support LGBTQ+ students. So if you’re interested in continuing the conversation, let us know. Just helps us to know how to follow up with everyone.

So I’m going to leave that up here for a moment. And I’m going rapid fire these questions and you two can tackle them however you’d like. Are the O four U conferences free for students to attend?

Amanda Zielinski Slenski:

They are. So we are supported by 200 large corporations that fully fund attendance for all of our students. The only thing that they need to cover is getting themselves to an airport, so everything else is covered during their entire weekend. And we do support students globally, so we are not limitations in terms of international students or domestic students. And we recruit out of all colleges, so community colleges, tribal colleges, HBCUs, traditional institutions, you name it.

Ashley Safranski:

Really quick in the chat, is it okay to connect with you both on LinkedIn?

Amanda Zielinski Slenski:

Yeah.

Suede Graham:

Absolutely.

Ashley Safranski:

Okay. I’m going to, I’ll add their profile links in the follow-up email if that’s… Sounds like we have the okay here.

Amanda Zielinski Slenski:

Yeah, go right ahead.

Ashley Safranski:

What advice do you have for schools in states where there are restrictions regarding openly discussing LGBTQ+ issues? I’d love to be open and out for students, but that is not necessarily safe for me.

Amanda Zielinski Slenski:

Yes, and this is one of the pieces when I mentioned earlier, there’s lots of reasons why you can’t be a safe space, and this is one of them. We are currently really struggling with this in some of the states. We have a large draw from a state that has extremely restrictive policies. So about 26 states in the US right now have somewhat restrictive policies in some way, shape, or form. But we have a state that we draw a lot of students from that has extremely restrictive policies and made lots of changes to higher education and diversity, equity, inclusion support offices and staffing.

And we have campus ambassadors that are across the entire country, that talk about O for U with their organizations, their peers, their faculty members. And we had students who were actually told that they could lose their research positions if they continue to speak about O four U, which is not legal. Free speech is a thing. And they are not employed by O fur U, they’re sharing of their own accord and their own volition. However, it’s real, the fear and the concern is all there.

I will say broadly, I’ll just be honest, we have not found a fantastic solution for this. So when there is some of the political pressure, but the structural support is still there, we have found that much easier. So we have found that much easier to support students, like say through student affairs offices more broadly or kind of just shifting a little bit in how we do those communications. In some of the states right now, it is very challenging for us to provide support for students.

So we are being as public and loud as we can be so that we can be the support for the students that do not necessarily have support, not because folks don’t want to, but because it’s just not accessible the same way on their campus community. So only you know the limits of what you can and can’t do. But if you can, share Out for Undergrad as a resource, things like oSTEM as a resource, Point Foundation, undergraduate focused LGBTQ+ programs. Same thing for students from other diverse backgrounds. If you can share that, we can help carry the weight of that while you have restrictions.

Part of that is I don’t know how much freedom you have to do that, and I own that and I’m honest. I’m very happy to be in a state in which I’m not facing this right now, and I know how tough it would be to be in a place where I want to help students and feel like I cannot. But whatever capacity in which you can do that, we can help you to carry that. And our mentors and other organizations like us can help that as much as possible.

I know it’s not the best answer. We don’t have a great one. We’ve met with lawyers, we’ve met with leaders in the field. Part of it is time and how this develops. We just don’t know where it’s going in this immediate, especially in an election year. So we’re hoping that over time, we have more knowledge and more understanding of how we can navigate some of this.

Ashley Safranski:

Thanks for that, Amanda. I know that’s a big question, not an easy… Not a direct answer. There’s a few questions about some of the resources that maybe you both recommend to be able to promote on virtual career centers or websites, content creators, et cetera. And then someone asks, can we share some of the resources that you even just mentioned, Amanda? Maybe after this, what we can do is pull together a list. The three of us can put our heads together and get the list of everything we talked about here and anything else, and share that out in the follow-up email. Would that be [inaudible 00:46:45]-

Amanda Zielinski Slenski:

[inaudible 00:46:45] that’s best, yeah.

Ashley Safranski:

Okay. That will be… Then people don’t have to sit there and scribble.

Amanda Zielinski Slenski:

I will do a little plug for our… So our website is not the prettiest. It’s functional, but there are a lot of resources on it and it’s under resources. So just something to keep in mind that there’s quite a bit in our resources.

Ashley Safranski:

Any advice specifically for STEM students?

Amanda Zielinski Slenski:

I’ll take this one just because Suede is more in the business field. But if you have more to add, Suede, feel free.

Since coming to O four U, I have been shocked because I thought that within STEM fields they would have more challenges in terms of support and resources than they would in other fields like business or marketing, media tech. I have found the opposite. We have found so many STEM organizations, we have found so many companies that are doing amazing work within STEM fields to support the community. So I would lean into it a bit and say that there really are a lot of resources out there for students in the STEM fields.

What I think is hard is representation of certain intersectional identities. So STEM fields broadly tend to be a bit less diverse than other fields, big scope, broad strokes. So I think that intersectional representation can be harder. But we utilize a couple of resources for our students. I’ve mentioned oSTEM a couple of times. AnitaB has the Grace Hopper Conference, which is specifically for women and non-binary individuals going into STEM fields and within tech. So some of those organizations can be really good resources for students.

And then I think all the rest of our advice all applies. So really asking questions, finding mentorship, seeking representation, I think all still applies as well. But I have been very… Suede and I just left the engineering conference and it is the most loving, welcoming, supportive network of people that I’ve engaged with in my career. So I was very pleasantly… I had a misconception of what I thought the STEM field would be like for the LGBT+ community, and I had no knowledge of that field. You don’t want me doing anything that could be sciency. So that has really been very nice to see. It’s been great.

Ashley Safranski:

The last question that I have here in the Q&A box, how do you address the loneliness aspect as a career advisor, especially for LGBTQ+ students?

Amanda Zielinski Slenski:

So I was not out in undergrad, so I’ll pause there and I’m going to turn this over to Suede. But I will say as an advisor, it can also be lonely. So think about yourself too is my one piece and get support for yourself. But I’ll turn this one over to Suede.

Suede Graham:

I was out in undergrad and I also, I went to Arkansas for undergrad and that’s where I was born and raised. So I think being a person of color, queer individual and from there I think has its moments. But there were moments of loneliness, I think, and my undergrad did not have a PRIDE group. We did not have a organization that helped support queer students. But I did find safety, honestly, with res life, in residence life, I think that is a… Because with res life, you’re supposed to be making this a home for students. So I did find safety in some of the programming there. And actually, I ended up working very closely as a student with res life, not even as an RA, but just as someone spitting out ideas. And that was pretty cool to have that experience.

But I think it’s just so cliche to say, but it does get better. It is not going to be like that for forever. I think if I could have told 19, 20-year-old Suede that he would be in his lower 30s living in New York City, living his dream, I would tell him that he’s lying. But I would say that the loneliness is not for forever and that just really working with that student, working through that loneliness, but also working to see the big picture. Where do you see yourself in three years? Where do you see yourself in five years, 10 years? What can we do now to set you up so that you can be living your dream five to 10 years down the line?

Ashley Safranski:

Thanks for that, Suede. I think that’s all of our questions. So last chance, if you have anything, feel free to throw it in the chat or in the Q&A, but I feel like we were pretty efficient and got through a lot of great information.

Amanda and Suede, just thank you so much for volunteering your time to join us for the webinar. So much great information shared and lots to be shared. We’re going to put our heads together and share out some more resources. But thank you so much for joining us and thanks everyone for attending.

Amanda Zielinski Slenski:

Thank you all so much.

Suede Graham:

Thank you, this was wonderful. Thank you everybody. Have a great Wednesday.

Ashley Safranski:

All right. Take care everyone.