The IBA and DVLF extend our sincere congratluations to Jiahong Xu! Jiahong is a student leader and alumni fellow at the Wharton School where he is an MBA candidate. Hailing from a small, conservative village in China, he grew up to be the first person in his family to attend college. After working with the LGBT group at his college and graduating he joined the team at Accenture, where he did pro bono consulting for many LGBT organizations. At Wharton, he’s helped connect Chinese companies to network with LGBT students and has helped organize panels about making Wharton and others places of business more inclusive places.
In 2016, he was awarded the World Economic Forum Annual Global Shaper Award out of 5300+ applicants for his long journey in pushing LGBTQ equality agenda in working place.
His goals to advocate equality for LGBTQ community will not stop after graduating from Wharton. Instead, he says this will be a beginning of a new yet more exciting journey. He plans to leverage his previous experience and his network to launch a platform to help young LGBTQ talents to come to fruition.
In the short run, his goal is to bridge similar opportunities with LGBTQ individuals. In the long run, the mission of his platform is really to create career opportunities for our community. He plans to organize career panels and specific training workshops to better facilitate those young talents to fit into new roles. Lastly, he will launch a mentorship program that pairs up a senior LGBTQ professional or an ally with a junior talent.
We are thrilled to welcome Jiahong to our list of worthy winners.