Adrienne Torf, MBA 92 – Bringing LGBTQ Students Together Since 1990

Jun 29 2023 • 44 mins

Our conversations for Pride Month continue with musician and composer Adrienne Torf. She and a few classmates co-founded the Gay, Lesbian and Bisexual MBA Students Group, known today as Q@Haas.

Adrienne has been a piano player her entire life, but after getting her undergraduate degree in Political Science at Stanford, she saw an opportunity to help fellow self-employed musicians build their businesses. She just needed to acquire the business skills before she could share them with her community of self-employed creatives. Getting her MBA at Haas sparked a second set of interests, and she spent the next 30 years in the for-profit and nonprofit worlds while still recording, performing and composing music.

Adrienne and host Sean Li discuss her recent retirement from nonprofit CFO work and full-time return to music and composing, what it was like forming an LGBTQ student group at Haas in the ‘90s, and the current threat facing LGBTQ rights.

*OneHaas Alumni Podcast is a production of Haas School of Business and is produced by University FM.*

Episode Quotes:

Her tough decision to either stay in school or go on tour

My father, ever the entrepreneur and, I think, really an insightful parent, cut me a deal. He said, “You finish school. You've only got a year to go, finish your undergrad, and I will pay your rent for a year after you graduate. So you can work as a musician without worrying about where you're gonna sleep at night.”

What drew her to business school

I wanted to come back to the community of artists, of which I was a member, with wisdom, with knowledge, with resources. And over time, I have been able to do that, but not as directly as I had intended when I started at Haas.

The challenges her student group faced in the ‘90s

When we wanted to get the word out that we were having meetings, many of the other men who were gay and who wanted to be connected to this group insisted that we not put announcements about the meetings in their mailboxes, which anybody could poke into if they wanted to. So we had to fairly clandestinely post notices about our meeting times and places on bulletin boards where these guys would sneak by and get the information.

What she hopes people will do this Pride Month

Spend half an hour reading about all of the legislation in all of the states that is designed to silence the voices of queer and trans people that is designed to deprive everybody of books and films and curricula that keep us visible, and that are already making it impossible for trans people to access the medical care that they need in order to be physically healthy as who they are. Read that stuff, and I hope you will be compelled to do something about it.