Robert Reid’s already-impressive résumé just got even fuller, as he was named the winner of the 2015 Independence Business Alliance/Delaware Valley Legacy Fund scholarship.
The $2,500 scholarship is given to an LGBT or ally undergraduate student enrolled in a business-related discipline in the region.
Reid, 20, is a native of Mayfair in Northeast Philadelphia and a sophomore at Drexel University. He is enrolled in the university’s five-year, three-co-op program, majoring in accounting and financing, with a minor in public relations. Reid is aiming for a career in management consulting.
“I think that one of the best ways to position myself to build up the technical skills needed for the management-consulting field is with an accounting and finance major,” Reid said. “I also have an interest in communications and public relations, and I think that goes really well; if you have the accounting and finance experience, you need the communication ability to sell to the audience you’re going to have.”
Reid recently returned from a six-month co-op in London at SEI, an international wealth management-solutions firm.
“It was just great, getting to work with the executive team there. I got exposure to things that I initially felt were over my head, but you are able to absorb so much more information when you have that exposure,” Reid said, noting that some staffing changes around the time he started with the company necessitated him taking on even more responsibility than he anticipated. “A few things happened where I had to step up and take on more responsibility than I was supposed to, but I was able to learn so much more that way.”
Reid has also served as a corporate talent-management intern at Alcoa in New York City, a human-resources intern at GlaxoSmithKline and a business-development intern at the Greater Philadelphia Chamber of Commerce.
He also chaired the Philadelphia Youth Commission, a youth-led committee that advises the mayor and City Council on youth-related issues.
In addition to leadership development, the position motivated him to take on more advocacy work, Reid said, including for education funding. He attended Catholic school largely because his grandmother delayed her retirement until she was in her 70s to help pay for his education.
“I was blessed to get that education and position myself well to get into Drexel and then have other opportunities because of that, but there are a lot of parents who make that same effort but it doesn’t yield the same results for their kids, in terms of access to quality education,” he said. “As chair, I branched out and we started making advocacy trips to Harrisburg, and we had students come on the trips, so it wasn’t just parents or lobby groups, which I think is important.”
IBA executive administrator Tom Cavanaugh said Reid’s commitment to youth involvement and advocacy was particularly appealing to the scholarship committee, which consists of representatives of IBA, DVF and LinguiSearch, the program’s founding sponsor.
“One of the things the committee looks for is how a particular applicant gives back to the community. Very often, with all the things students have going on — keeping up their grades, internships, jobs — that can be hard,” Cavanaugh said. “But in his application, Robert talked about not waiting to give back until you graduate or have a job, that students can give back now. And he’s continually looking for opportunities to better the world around him, which really shined through in his application.”
The scholarship program launched in 2011 and the application numbers have continued to grow each year, Cavanaugh said, as has the scholarship itself, which started at $1,000.
The program committee has also recently been working to enhance local awareness about the program.
“We built an expanded database to get the word out about the scholarship to area colleges and universities, and that’s been very, very successful,” Cavanaugh said, noting that partnerships like that between IBA and DVLF are integral to the community’s success. “All of the different organizations serve the LGBT community in some way, shape or form and through different avenues and partnerships we can all assist and better the community as a whole. IBA was particularly interested of course in helping the LGBT business community and its allies and we wouldn’t be able to award this scholarship if it weren’t for the partnership with DVLF; it’s about garnering your resources and combining them to help programs like this grow and strengthen our community.”
Reid, who is bisexual, said he is still going through the coming-out process, which he said made his selection for the scholarship even more rewarding.
“I was surprised and really happy because, considering I’m still transitioning and integrating into the LGBTQ community, this was validation and support that IBA sees what I’ve done, where I plan to go and supports that,” he said. “That’s a really powerful thing for me.”