David Rosales

Before HBS: Management consultant at Oliver Wyman, project manager at Visiting Nurse Service of New York, a non-profit healthcare provider
Hometown: Memphis, TN
Career Aspirations: Non-profit healthcare management
Interests: Food, Travel, Non-fiction reading, the Golden Girls

How has your experience been being out on campus?
To me, being openly out has always had a wonderfully paradoxical element to it: while my LGBT identity is a big issue to me, I simultaneously expect it to be a non-issue to others. And in my experience, being out in all parts of my life—whether with my friends, at work, or even just at the car rental counter with my husband—has always reinforced the paradox that the more open and transparent I am about being gay, the more routine and uneventful that aspect of my identity is to those around me.

And this has definitely been the case for me at HBS. Being out here has been easy and fluid. Although the nationalities, cultural backgrounds, and political views of my fellow students may be diverse and varied, the level of respect and care that my husband I have received from them has been extremely high, consistent, and unvaried. I still remember bringing him to sit-in on a Leadership class early in the year and the standing ovation he got from my sectionmates.

Being part of the LGBT community has also always been an important part of my life before school, and it continues to be so here. HBS is unique among business schools in the sheer number of out LGBT students it has, and the friendships I have made with those in the group are close and lifelong.

Given my experience, I would definitely encourage any incoming student to be openly out on campus. However, these are of course personal decisions that each person makes based on his or her particular circumstances. One of the strengths of HBS and its LGBT community is its respect for and acceptance of a wide spectrum of identities and comfort levels. This place has an authentic desire to meet you "where you are" and allow you to create your own unique path to becoming a better leader.

The case method?
On the first day of Marketing, my professor gave us this advice on how to prepare for class: "Read and analyze the case. Really put yourself in the shoes of the protagonist. Think deeply about your options. Make a final decision on which you would bet your entire career. Then come to class ready to fiercely defend it."

Although it seemed a bit extreme at the time, I have come to appreciate that advice because it highlights two aspects of great leadership that the case method is uniquely positioned to prepare us for. The first is that leaders are constantly faced with ambiguity. Confronting that ambiguity requires thoughtful and objective analysis of the factors surrounding that particular decision, not the generalities of a theory. Each case is based on a real business problem and brings with it its own set of unique circumstances and variables to grapple with.

The second is that great leadership requires decisive action. All too often it is tempting to delay or shy away from action until the path becomes more certain, but what brings success is the ability to make a decision and then execute against it. With almost every case, we are asked to define what our specific plan of action would be, a slowly (and painfully) built instinct that will prove invaluable in the future.

Did you have preconceived notions about HBS?
Before coming, I thought everyone I would meet at HBS would be a consultant or investment banker. As someone interested in non-profit work, I braced myself to be the lone subversive voice to stick up for the value of social enterprise in class discussions and was ready to seek out the precious, brave handful of others who shared my aspirations. I was proven sorely wrong on my first day in class to find out that several of my sectionmates came from the non-profit world, and, what’s more, that one of our first cases would be about an entrepreneurial social enterprise whose goal was to provide a writing desk to every child in South Africa.

Not only am I surrounded by students with backgrounds similar to mine, I also get the perspective of former military officers, sectionmates who managed hundreds of manufacturing personnel in rural Indiana, an entrepreneur who started his own political magazine, cereal product managers, a GAP buyer, a former Congressional aide, and several others from 'non-traditional' backgrounds. The diversity of perspectives that my classmates bring to bear on the case discussion is humbling, and came as a wonderful surprise. Not only do I learn from them every day, but I also know I’ll continue to enjoy their friendship for many decades to come.