Those of you who’ve been reading this blog for a while likely know that the concept of “community” is a big thing for me. This notion can be interpreted in many different ways, particularly when it comes to business school, where students become a part of the overall community at their school and several other smaller communities within the school. For me, one of my most important communities at the GSB was the Black Business Student Association and, although there weren’t many of us in number, we developed bonds tighter than i could have ever imagined coming into the GSB. During my time at the school, I tried to come up with ways to make the BBSA community even tighter, including taking each first-year BBSA student to either dinner or lunch during first quarter, but I feel like I ran out of time before graduating. With my time in the Bay area growing shorter, I recently came up with another idea to link current BBSA students up with young BBSA alums in the area for a dinner that I hope will become a regular occurrence in years to come. Given that there aren’t many Black folks in Palo Alto and the surrounding areas, I thought that this sort of event would be a great way to keep the BBSA alums connected with the on-campus BBSA members in the spirit of family, friendship, and fellowship.

For this first dinner, I invited alums from the Classes of 2004 and 2005, some of my classmates, and students from the Class of 2007 and 10 people from 2004, 2006, and 2007 were able to make it. I had a great time hanging out with the BBSA folk in attendance. The two ’04ers were the first two Stanford GSB students that I met when i came for my Admit Weekend in 2004 and it felt like I was going full-circle to be kickin’ it with them as a GSB alum myself. Looking around at my fellow 2006 BBSA grads, I felt such a sense of pride to see these guys that I’d started with two years ago as they are on the verge of making huge moves in their own ways as they leave the Stanford GSB environment and re-enter the Real World. And, finally, seeing the ’07 folks at the dinner made me feel a bit nostalgic and sad about my time at Stanford coming to an end. Whew, I’m proud of all of us and our fellow BBSA classmates and hope that we can use the diversity within our own ranks to have an effect on the business world, at large, in the next few years.

The people at the dinner had such a good time that they asked me to organize another BBSA group outing for this weekend as a send-off to those of us from the Class of 2006 who will be leaving the area soon. Plus, one of the BBSA co-Presidents who attended the dinner told me that he’s going to try to plan a few more of these dinners for this coming school year. This has me thinking that we could starting something long lasting with this stuff. All of this from one dinner…in the words of Hannibal from the A-Team, “I love it when a plan comes together”