Networking

Leveraged Equality

Todd Sears

08.18.21

As Todd schemed up the venture that would eventually become Out Leadership, he started with the most important tool in his toolbox: his network. Check out this tale of how wine with friends turned into his life's passion.

Summary:

As Todd schemed up the venture that would eventually become Out Leadership, he started with the most important tool in his toolbox: his network. Check out this tale of how wine with friends turned into his life’s passion.

Thuy

Describe one example of how your network has helped to propel your career.
Todd_Sears

Todd Sears

Gosh, how much time do we have left?

Thuy

All day.
Todd_Sears

Todd Sears

All day, right. Everything I've built has been through my network. When I started Out Leadership, it was out on the street and I had just gotten laid off from Credit Suisse, there was a re-organization, and I found myself on my cellphone with a severance check and two martinis, maybe three, and I thought, what am I going to do next? And I thought back to what I built at Merrill and gosh, if I could get that type of a company to leverage their resources to advocate for equality, why couldn't I do that for more companies? And so I literally just reached out to my network, I invited six friends to a wine bar, and over wine, I pitched them this idea. I said, "Look, no one is convening senior business leaders to talk about equality. I'd like to do it, what do you think?" They all thought it sounded like a great idea and each of them then started to reach out to their network, and before I knew it, Deutsche Bank was raising his hand to host the first summit and we had Bank of America, Barclays, Citi, Deutsche, Goldman Sachs, and Morgan Stanley all sign up to be our inaugural members. I used that severance check to self-fund the organization because I didn't know if it would work, and then I just continued to reach out to my network and to their networks, and our first summit, we were 200% oversubscribed, and then we grew from there, and so as I mentioned, we are on five continents, we have initiatives that are changing the world across many dimensions, but that is solely from my network, and as we've grown that network, it continues to compound and expand, and it really is exciting to be able to connect people through the network so they can do business together, so they can support each other, but also to develop talent and ultimately, to get all of these things pointed in the direction of LGBT equality.