This presentation identifies the skills necessary for successful entrepreneurship in the 21st century.

Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender (LGBT) issues represent an emergent sub-topic within the broader framework of diversity. The field of HRD has begun to include broader discussions and explorations in topics of diversity, beginning with the first explicitly “critical” AHRD Symposium in 2002 in Honolulu, Hawaii. There has been an increase in the number of innovative sessions and papers dealing with LGBT issues presented at the AHRD annual Symposium. LGBT scholars have made some inroads with respect to heightening awareness and getting a “place at the table” within the Academy, as evidenced by the recent Advances in Developing Human Resources journal entitled “Sexual Minority Issues in HRD: Raising Awareness” (Rocco, Gedro, & Kormanik, 2009). LGBT issues remain, however, contested terrain in the larger sociopolitical context, as evidenced by the recent decision of President Obama’s administration to uphold the Defense of Marriage Act, which denies equal treatment to married same-sex couples. LGBT people remain a marginalized, stigmatized, and unequally protected segment of the population in the United States and around the world.

The triple bottom line of economics, environment, and equity has become a ubiquitous conversation in the business literature and related venues. This paper will discuss the relationship between the triple bottom line and human resource development. While effective HRD practices certainly impact the economics, or the financial performance, of an organization, and while is clearly a relationship between HRD’s efforts to provide training and education to help create environmentally conscious organizations, this paper focuses on the equity component of the triple bottom line. HRD efforts, I will argue, must be factored into the discourse on the triple bottom line, since it is often HRD practices that enable or prohibit access and mobility for employees. HRD efforts can also shape workplace cultures and environments that are inclusive, welcoming and civil, which contribute to sustainability.

This theory development paper will locate the identity politics of lesbian single-ness as a resistance to the hetero-normative structural expectations of lesbian coupledom. The paper will contextualize the emancipatory nature of lesbian single-ness as a radical choice in the face of heteronormative assumptions of coupledom. Existing power structures and discourses privilege lesbian coupledom over other choices.

This article presents an interview between Julie Gedro, a parishioner at St. Paul’s Episcopal Cathedral, and the Very Reverend Tom Luck, who is the Dean and Rector of St. Paul’s. Reverend Luck has been, and continues to be, an outspoken advocate for LGBT inclusion in the Episcopal Church.

In this paper, I would like to offer the suggestion that HRD become an ethics champion within the corporations and the organizations we serve. By surveying and synthesizing literature from higher education and professional associations on business ethics theory and practice, this paper provides both rationale as well as strategies for HRD professionals to shape the current and prospective ethical climates of organizations.

While being a lesbian presents obvious challenges because lesbians face interlocking systems of sexism and heterosexism, being a lesbian also presents opportunities to live relatively free of societal expectations of couple-hood. This paper will theorize from the literature that lesbians have the opportunity to transgress and transcend societal expectations of “compulsory couple-hood” (adapted from Rich, 1980). However, the paper will also highlight the absence of exploration in Adult Education and related fields of single lesbianism. The paper is framed by Gedro’s theory of how lesbians have learned to negotiate the heterosexism of corporate America, as well as feminist psychology.

Adult Education in Queer Contexts: Power, Politics, and Pedagogy is divided into 16 chapters beginning with a review of themes, concepts, and ideas pervasive at the Adult Education Research Conference (AERC) and AERC LGBTQ&Allies PreConferences for more than half a decade. The chapters in this edited text are—like the concept Queer—eclectic, dynamic, flowing, turbulent, enraging, engaging, encompassing, unyielding, unapologetic, and still they provide just a limited purview of all that is Queer in adult education, lifelong learning, culture, and society. Nevertheless, the sum of these chapters provides readers with an intricate and informative pathway to learn about Queer politics, culture, and sociality, and to explore sexual minorities—including lesbian, gay, two-spirit, bisexual, intersexual, transsexual, transgender, and Queer persons—and their issues into the present moment.