2020 Black Ivy League Business Conference 

Message to Our HBCU Family

The Black Ivy League Business Conference (BILBCon), hosted by the Black Wharton Undergraduate Association (BWUA), was founded in 2016 to bring ambitious and high-achieving minority students under one roof to further our professional development. BILBCon is an opportunity for Black students to: engage with Black business leaders, entrepreneurs, and influencers, learn about their success stories, and confirm the potential in ourselves and our peers. Through this experience, past attendees have been exposed to a variety of diverse career paths, developed powerful networks, and most importantly, celebrated Black excellence.

Henceforth, the Black Ivy League Business Conference formally invites our fellow undergraduate students who attend four-year Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) to virtually engage with other talented and motivated students from October 9th-10th, 2020. We hope many of you will join us! 

Since BILBCon’s inception, BWUA has successfully hosted nearly 200 students annually from all eight Ivy League universities on the University of Pennsylvania campus. We’d like to thank our sponsors and all past BILBCon committee members for their support and hard work in executing great conferences thus far and allowing BILBCon to be for us and by us!

It is no secret that the Ivy League has historically been a seat of privilege and immeasurable resources. With the flexibility of a virtual platform, we intend to share our privilege and resources with our peers at four-year HBCUs. We know that no matter where we attend university or college, Black people will always be talented, vibrant, beautiful, and more.

Wharton’s Dean Erika H. James, the first woman and person of color to assume the role, said,  "We often say that there's not a pipeline of diverse talent. Well, there's not a pipeline if you look in a very narrow set of places for that talent. One of the things companies can do differently is broaden where they go to identify where there's possibly really exceptional talent that might be untapped."  Thus, we extend a permanent BILBCon invitation to our four-year HBCU peers to tackle the elitism that has been ingrained in Ivy League institutions and corporate talent pipelines for far too long.

While more details about how we intend to market and organize this invitation are to come, we will begin with an overview. We will recruit BILBCon Ambassador Teams from various HBCUs to be points of contact and share this opportunity. We are excited to start this partnership with our HBCU peers. We look forward to getting to know you all at BILBCon 2020!

Thank you and stay safe,

The Fifth Annual Black Ivy League Business Conference Co-Chairs

The Black Wharton Undergraduate Association