University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses

Women of color administrators in mid-level management at predominantly White institutions and their leadership aspirations

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Women of color administrators in mid-level management at predominantly White institutions and their leadership aspirations

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Content WOMEN OF COLOR ADMINISTRATORS IN MID-LEVEL MANAGEMENT AT
PREDOMINANTLY WHITE INSTITUTIONS AND THEIR LEADERSHIP ASPIRATIONS
by
Julienne Jose-Chen
A Dissertation Presented to the
FACUL TY OF THE USC ROSSIER SCHOOL OF
EDUCATION UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
In Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements for the Degree
DOCTOR OF EDUCATION
December 2021
Copyright 2021 Julienne Jose-Chen

ii

Table of Contents
List of Tables .................................................................................................................................. v
List of Figures ................................................................................................................................ vi
Abstract ......................................................................................................................................... vii
CHAPTER 1: OVERVIEW OF THE STUDY ............................................................................... 1
Background of the Problem......................................................................................................... 4
Statement of the Problem ............................................................................................................ 6
Purpose of the Study ................................................................................................................... 8
Significance of the Study ............................................................................................................ 9
Organization of the Study ......................................................................................................... 10
CHAPTER 2: REVIEW OF THE LITERATURE ....................................................................... 13
Leadership Identity Development among Women of Color ..................................................... 14
Multiple Dimensions of Leadership ...................................................................................... 15
Multidomains of leadership. .............................................................................................. 15
Intersectionality.................................................................................................................. 17
Leadership and Identity Development among Women of Color Administrators .................. 18
Environmental Factors: The Institution and Structural Barriers ............................................... 27
History of Higher Education.................................................................................................. 28
Pivotal moments and legislature. ....................................................................................... 29
Institutional Factors ............................................................................................................... 35
Institutional commitment to diversity and institutional culture. ........................................ 36
Career mobility and advancement opportunities. .............................................................. 38
Representation and visibility.............................................................................................. 41
Hypervisibility and invisibility....................................................................................... 42
Mentorship ................................................................................................................................ 46
Conceptual Framework ............................................................................................................. 58
Bronfenbrenner’s ecological theory ...................................................................................... 60
Microsystem. ...................................................................................................................... 63
Mesosystems. ..................................................................................................................... 64
Exosystem. ......................................................................................................................... 64
Macrosystem. ..................................................................................................................... 66
CHAPTER 3: RESEARCH METHODS ...................................................................................... 69

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Research Design ........................................................................................................................ 69
Sampling.................................................................................................................................... 70
Description of Settings .......................................................................................................... 71
Participants ............................................................................................................................ 71
Data Collection .......................................................................................................................... 78
Interviews .............................................................................................................................. 78
Journals .................................................................................................................................. 79
Data Analysis ............................................................................................................................ 80
Positionality, Credibility and Trustworthiness .......................................................................... 83
Ethics ......................................................................................................................................... 84
Limitations ................................................................................................................................ 85
Conclusion ................................................................................................................................. 87
CHAPTER 4: FINDINGS ............................................................................................................ 88
Mentorship for the Journey Forward ......................................................................................... 88
“Shoulder-tapped” For Leadership: Mentors Seeing Potential in Women of Color ............. 90
Mentorship and Lifting as You Climb ................................................................................ 94
Mentorship as a Way to Create Change Where They Are .................................................... 97
“Find Your People”: Mentorship as Community-Building ............................................... 98
Mentorship as an Act of Resistance ................................................................................. 101
Shared Leadership as a Response to Structure and Culture of PWIs ...................................... 109
Hierarchical Structure of PWIs ............................................................................................ 110
Lack of Transparency at PWIs ............................................................................................ 114
Moving Towards Shared Leadership ................................................................................... 118
Creating Lateral and Reciprocal Leadership Structures................................................. 118
Sharing Knowledge and Transparent Leadership ........................................................... 122
Connection to larger purpose .................................................................................................. 126
Centering Social Justice and Equity .................................................................................... 127
Desire to Change the Culture of PWIs ................................................................................ 129
Senior Leadership Roles as Pathway for Change: Being the Bridge for Students and Staff
.......................................................................................................................................... 133
Opportunities Outside of Higher Education: New Avenues to Create Change ................... 136
Prioritizing Family and Well-Being ........................................................................................ 140
Feelings of Being Emotionally and Mentally Drained and Cultural Taxation .................... 140

iv

Microaggressions and Code-Switching ............................................................................... 143
Code-Switching ................................................................................................................ 145
Imposter Syndrome .......................................................................................................... 146
Prioritizing Physical Well-being and Health ....................................................................... 148
Balancing Work and Family Life ..................................................................................... 150
Creating Boundaries to Protect Family Life. ............................................................... 150
Larger Messages About Being a Woman and Woman of Color Professional. ............ 152
CHAPTER 5: DISCUSSION...................................................................................................... 158
Summary of Findings .............................................................................................................. 161
Experiences With Mentors Impacted How Participants Viewed Leadership ...................... 161
Leadership Was Seen as Shared, Regardless of Position or Trajectory .............................. 162
Connecting to a Bigger Purpose Can Sustain Their Motivation, but is it Enough? ............ 162
Societal Pressures of Being a Woman of Color and a Working Mother Shaped Aspirations
............................................................................................................................................. 164
Implications ............................................................................................................................. 165
Culture of PWIs (Mesosystem and Exosystem) .................................................................. 166
Social expectations (macrosystem  microsystem). .......................................................... 167
Recommendations ................................................................................................................... 168
Moving towards a lateral, shared leadership model (mesosystem, exosystem). ................. 169
Creating Infrastructure That Supports Women of Color Staff ............................................ 171
Encourage New and Multiple Ways of Leading ................................................................. 171
Create a Culture of Community Care .................................................................................. 173
Future Research ....................................................................................................................... 174
Conclusion ............................................................................................................................... 176
Appendix A ................................................................................................................................. 179
Appendix B ................................................................................................................................. 179
Appendix C ................................................................................................................................. 183
Appendix D ................................................................................................................................. 184
Appendix E ................................................................................................................................. 186
Appendix F ................................................................................................................................. 193
Appendix G ................................................................................................................................. 196
Appendix H ................................................................................................................................. 233
References ................................................................................................................................... 237

v

List of Tables
Table 1. Inhibitors and facilitators experienced at each system. .................................................. 61
Table 2. List of women of color mid-level manager participants ................................................. 74
Table 3. Themes from literature and systems where these themes are present. ........................... 81

vi

List of Figures
Figure 1. Sense-making of women of color administrators in mid-level management positions in
the context of intersectionality and systems. ................................................................................ 62

vii

Abstract
Women of color leaders are not fully represented in the makeup of senior leadership roles
such as college and university presidents. As of 2017, only 5% of all US college and university
presidents identified as a woman of color (American Council on Education, 2017). It is important
that women of color are given ample opportunities to lead institutions of higher education (IHEs)
and to contribute to policies that can impact the greater university community. When leadership
of IHEs are more diverse, it benefits the larger student community as the students can have
confidence that their institution is working towards their benefit when they see leaders who look
like them (Finkel, 2019). Using Bronfenbrenner’s ecological theory as a part of the conceptual
framework, this qualitative, interview-based study focused primarily on the experiences of
women of color mid-level managers (MLMs) at predominantly White institutions (PWIs) and
examined how their experiences influenced their leadership aspirations. The findings highlighted
four themes: mentorship as a way to persist and resist, shared leadership as a way to counteract
PWI culture, connection to a larger purpose as a motivator, and the impact of family and well-
being on overall leadership aspirations. Moreover, their viewpoints and meanings of leadership
were not restricted to one way to lead, such as the pathway upward to senior leadership roles.

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CHAPTER 1: OVERVIEW OF THE STUDY
Institutions of higher education (IHEs) have been encountering multiple social issues
over the years and all are coming to a boiling point as of late. Although students of color are
enrolling in colleges and universities at a higher rate (Espinosa et al., 2019), they are more likely
to drop out of those institutions (Libassi, 2018). This can potentially be linked to the acts of
discrimination being experienced at these campuses and the lack of support for underrepresented
student populations (Anderson, 2017). Black students are encountering acts of discrimination on
multiple campuses across the country, as seen through Instagram accounts such as
@blackatharvardlaw and @black_at_usc (Nguyen, 2020). In addition, there were many protests
and demonstrations in earlier years, such as the student protests and the University of Missouri
that prompted the stepping down of the president as well as studies to be conducted on campus
racial climate (Fries-Britt et al., 2020). Students have noted the lack of Black faculty, staff, and
leaders at these institutions, which contributed to their feeling of being unwelcomed and
alienated at these institutions. In addition to the racial inequities, female students have also
experienced issues of gender discrimination and sexual harassment at college campuses. One out
of five female college students have reported being a victim of sexual harassment or abuse (Graf,
2020), and universities across the country are currently under scrutiny for the mishandling of
sexual harassment cases (Graf, 2020; Lavigne, 2020). Students of color and female students are
experiencing discrimination on the basis of gender and race at IHEs, and how university
leadership addresses these issues is critical to the success of the students. At Harvard University,
President Bacow released a statement in response to the unjust killing of George Floyd that was
perceived as dismissive. He was criticized by students, with Nadirah Foley, a Ph.D. student at
Harvard, stating that the message was centered on “what he—as a White man—believes, rather

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than using the moment to reflect and express genuine empathy and solidarity with Black
members of the Harvard community and Black people as a whole” (McKenzie, 2020). And while
this is by no means a new phenomenon, just recently, Black women faculty have felt the
ostracization by White institutions of higher education as Nikole Hannah Jones was denied
tenure at the University of North Carolina. After many protests and demonstrations, Jones was
reoffered tenure, but had decided to turn down the offer. In her public statement, she stated that
“at some point when you have proven yourself and fought your way into institutions that were
not built for you, when you’ve proven you can compete and excel at the highest level, you have
to decide that you are done forcing yourself in” (NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund,
2021). What this highlighted is that regardless of their accomplishments and accolades,
predominantly White institutions (PWIs) were not built for women of color, particularly Black
women, and that we have a long way to go as a society before we can fully realize equitable
treatment of historically minoritized and systemically excluded individuals like women of color
1
.
With social issues unfolding into student activism on campuses nationwide, what is also
being highlighted is the insufficient student support at these universities. This includes but is not
limited to a diverse representation of staff and faculty that can address the needs of the students.
Research has shown that faculty interactions help with the sense of belonging among students
(Means & Pyne, 2017) and a more diversified composition of the institutional community such
as diverse students, staff, and faculty can help with the retention of students of color at
universities, particularly at PWIs (McClain & Perry, 2017). Yet faculty of color are oftentimes
called to serve as mentors and serve on committees which leads to overburdening the faculty of

1
When describing historically minoritized and systemically excluded populations such as Black, Indigenous, and People of Color
(BIPOC), I understand the importance of accurately naming these populations while also understanding that no term can fully
encapsulate the experiences of the groups. I acknowledge this tension and for the purposes of the study I will use phrases such as
staff of color, faculty of color, and women of color.

3

color and may also lead to not enough faculty to serve the numerous students of color (Matthew,
2016). Students need to receive holistic support from different aspects of the university,
including faculty and student-facing staff. As a result, student service and student affairs offices
are essential as they can provide support to students that are navigating higher education (Ching
& Agbayani, 2019).
Administrators and faculty members, particularly women of color staff and faculty, are
tasked with helping address issues of inequity and exclusion at IHEs, yet they themselves also
experience feelings of isolation as people of color at these IHEs, especially at PWIs (Gardner et
al., 2014; Gomez et al., 2015; Mena & Vaccaro, 2017). In response to recent #BlackLivesMatter
demonstrations off and on campus, one of the demands from student activists have been for the
institutions to increase the number of faculty of color and staff of color at IHEs as well as create
clearer pathways for promotion and tenure for staff and faculty of color (Nguyen, 2020).
Students of color are recognizing that institutions must invest in their success, and part of that
involves investing resources into more staff and faculty of color, this includes women of color
administrators and faculty members.
At the same time, these staff and faculty of color need a welcoming campus to work in as
well. Women of color leaders who are at the intersection of racism and sexism at IHEs
oftentimes face discrimination on both fronts of being a woman and being a person of color, as
of 2016, only 5% of college presidencies were held by women of color (American Council on
Education, 2017). The voices of women of color are needed at the leadership level as they can
ensure different perspectives are included in key decision-making processes and engage in
different approaches that will better support underrepresented student populations. It is important
that women of color are given ample opportunities to lead IHEs and to contribute to policies that

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can impact the greater university community, particularly during a precarious time when
multiple types of discrimination are coming to the surface. When leadership of IHEs are more
diverse, it benefits the larger student community as the students can have confidence that their
institution is working towards their benefit when they see leaders who look like them (Finkel,
2019). Given the above context, this study examined the experiences of women of color student
affairs professionals at IHEs, particularly at PWIs. Particularly most research is focused on
female faculty of color, this study focused on the experiences of mid-level managers who also
identified as women of color. It sought to understand how experiences in PWIs helped shape
their leadership aspirations to senior leadership roles.
Background of the Problem
In order to grasp the full impact of racial and systemic oppression in higher education, we
must first look deeper into the origins of IHEs. The key moments in history that shaped higher
education will be discussed in Chapter Two. The theme among the historic moments is that “the
‘shiny’ promises of many US institutions are subsidized by the ‘shadow’ of its constitutive
underside” (Stein, 2018, p. 78). In order to understand the demographic make-up and driving
purpose of today’s IHE, it’s important to understand the origins of these institutions. For
instance, the Morrill Land Grant Act of 1862 authorized the use of 30,000 acres of land for the
purpose of creating universities in hopes to promote American democracy among middle and
upper-class White men, yet it led to the displacement and slaughtering of thousands of
Indigenous people (Stein, 2018). American higher education was founded on principles that
were exclusionary, with IHEs granting education to White men at the expense of communities of
color. As scholars and practitioners, this needs to continue to be included in discussions
centering around women of color, their positions in these institutions, and how we collectively

5

address historic roots of oppression that may be resurfacing in barriers for women of color in
higher education today.
IHEs act as an extension of racist and hegemonic practices. Although the Civil Rights
Movement of the 1960s brought forth Affirmative Action and Title IX, both of which were
instrumental in ensuring equal opportunities for women and people of color in higher education,
the percentages of women and women of color in leadership positions or in tenured faculty
positions is still relatively low, particularly at research institutions (Jaschik, 2020). Out of a total
of 1,457,692 faculty members in 2013, underrepresented faculty (faculty members that identified
as Black, Indigenous or Latinx) held about 12.7% of faculty positions (or 185,614 faculty
members) at colleges and universities nationwide (Finkelstein et al., 2016). Women faculty rose
to about 49 % of the total faculty positions, but about 38% were tenured (Finkelstein et al.,
2016). About 77% of all female faculty identified as White women, which showed that they
remain the numerical majority among female faculty (Finkelstein et al., 2016). Even with slight
improvements in representation, many factors continue to persist among IHEs which may impact
women, particularly women of color administrators and faculty, and their ability to advance to
senior leadership. These include being limited to helper roles without appropriate recognition or
compensation, being stuck in mid-level management positions, and double-standards on how
women do not embody what leadership should look like (Eddy & Ward, 2015; Edwards et al.,
2011).
As will be further discussed below, the historic implications of racism and sexism are still
apparent in the lack of representation of individuals of color, particularly women of color, in
senior leadership positions. The fact that college presidencies and other senior leadership
positions have not improved significantly in terms of diversity is a problem that needs to be

6

addressed, because not only does it mean students of color do not have models in leadership
positions, lack of representation often affects the policies and resources that directly impact
female students of color and staff and faculty of color. Moreover, a lack of representation in
senior leadership position in PWIs can also influence future women of color administrators and
their decision to continue along the pathway towards senior leadership at IHEs.
Statement of the Problem
To better understand the problem of underrepresentation of women of color in senior
leadership positions, we must first look at existing factors that need to be further examined.
Currently, women and people of color are represented in multiple professional roles at IHEs, yet
hold fewer leadership positions when compared to their White male counterparts (Whitford,
2020). In addition, women of color make up only 5% of all college presidents nationwide
(American Council on Education, 2017). As college presidents serve as the face of the
institution, the significant issue that needs to be addressed is that a majority of the college
presidents are still White men, whereas the college student populations are becoming more
diverse (Espinosa et al., 2019; Johnson, 2017). Research has also shown that institutions and
organizations run by women have benefits such as increased representation of women faculty
and increased employee engagement and productivity (Flaherty, 2016; Nugent, 2019). There has
been growth in the number of women of color earning advanced degrees and obtaining mid-level
management positions (Lopez & Gonzalez-Barrera, 2014). Women and women of color
administrators are often times held back in mid-level management positions due to lack of
advancement opportunities or expectations that they are better positioned to manage but not lead
the university (Eddy & Ward, 2015). In order to better understand women of color administrators
and their decisions to pursue senior leadership positions such as the college presidency, I aimed

7

to focus on the mid-level management level and better understand the sense-making processes of
women of color in these positions and their experiences in the pipeline towards senior leadership.
While increased representation of faculty of color can help with students’ sense of
belonging (Means & Pyne, 2017), we must also examine the importance of student-facing staff
occupations such as those found in student affairs and student services units at IHEs. In times of
financial crises and budget cuts, student affairs units are asked to defend and argue their validity
and purpose on the campus. Often times, when prioritizing academic elements of IHEs, student
affairs and student services positions are either removed or student affairs divisions are
reorganized (Romano et al., 2010). With their combined experience of 75 years in student affairs,
Ching and Agbayani (2019) have argued that reorganizations are not cost-saving and lead to
further separation of student affairs from central decision-making processes. This is detrimental
because inclusion and support of student-facing units are critical to the success of students and
the overall health of the institution (Ching & Agbayani, 2019). In this study, I focused on women
of color who held mid-level management positions in student services and student affairs, as
their roles are critical for the success of students of color and female students.
In addition to the devaluing of student affairs and student services divisions, previous
research also shows that staff members of color experience challenges at institutions in
geographic locations that are predominantly White, or at institutions that are predominantly
White themselves (Gardner et al., 2014; Gomez et al., 2015; Woldoff et al., 2011). These schools
will be referred to as predominantly White institutions, or PWIs, going forward. PWIs have a
longstanding history of being unwelcoming and unsupportive for individuals of color on the
campus, and this includes students, staff, and faculty of color (Harper, 2012). In the study, I
interviewed participants who were, at the time of this study, employed in mid-level management

8

positions at PWIs, to determine how these environments continue to affect the sense of
belonging of women of color staff members and their aspirations for advancement within IHEs.
These experiences provided a window into their ability and desire to move into or remain in
positions of leadership.
Purpose of the Study
Much of the research literature that focuses on faculty or administrators of color at PWIs
showed that they responded to their environments and the challenges they faced in different
ways, whether that is internally through self-reflection and personal development or externally
through mentorship and collaboration with peers. The purpose of the study was to gain a better
understanding of the experiences of women of color at IHEs, particularly at PWIs with a focus
on how these experiences shaped their aspirations for senior leadership positions. This study
explored how their experiences informed how they viewed themselves as women of color and as
leaders. This was with the intent to understand the connection between their experiences and
their aspirations for advanced leadership roles, as there are women of color staff represented in
mid-level management positions but there remains a lack of women of color in senior leadership
positions at IHEs. I also focused on the role of mentorship and how women of color employed
mentorship. This included whether their choice to participate in either traditional, hierarchical
structures or non-traditional, lateral structures was informed by their desire to create a
community of support versus to advance professionally. In looking at mentorship, I examined
how mentorship served as a way to navigate these environments as well as a way to transform
the structures at PWIs.
Throughout the study, the focus was on the meaning-making process of the women of color.
The research question that guided this study was:

9

How do the experiences of women of color mid-level managers (MLMs) at PWIs inform their
pursuit of leadership opportunities?
Significance of the Study
More research on women of color experiences and sense making, particularly from the
staff vantage point, is needed as there is currently insufficient focus on women of color
administrators in mid-level management positions at PWIs. As will be discussed in the following
chapter, a majority of the research literature focused on faculty women of color navigating
academic settings and processes such as tenure. But there has been limited research conducted on
staff and higher education personnel at PWIs. There is little attention paid to women of color in
leadership positions such as college presidencies, deans, or chief student affairs officers, and the
journeys of staff members in mid-level positions in student affairs divisions (such as directors,
and program managers) towards senior leadership. As such, the aim of the study was to focus
primarily on the experiences of women of color at PWIs in mid-level staff positions, specifically.
Additionally, this study aimed to specifically examine the racist and sexist experiences of these
administrators. Harper (2012) conducted an analysis of previous research articles and the naming
of racism within those studies to explain why faculty and staff experienced feelings of alienation
or isolation at PWIs. The themes that emerged from his analysis were that possible causes for
educational inequities were highlighted but racism was not explicitly stated as being one of those
causes, or that other labels were used in place of the word “racism” (Harper, 2012). In one study
that was conducted with his colleague, they found that the topic of racism was deemed taboo and
due to the institutional culture of racial silence, students and administrators were rarely asked
about their lived experiences or realities as a person of color (Harper & Hurtado, 2007). In an
effort to address the gap that Harper (2012) brought up as well as the gap in the literature of

10

female administrators of color at PWIs, I asked participants about their experiences as a woman
and a person of color at PWIs, naming racism and sexism when and if they arose. More
specifically, I interviewed participants about how they make meaning of their experiences, and
move away from damage-centered and more towards desire-centered research (Tuck, 2009)
which will be further discussed in Chapters Two and Three. I applied a lens of intersectionality
when developing the interview questions and analyzing the data to represent the complexity of
identity as it affects women of color navigating IHEs. Through this study, I aimed to uncover
aspects of the institutional culture at PWIs that may be hindering or facilitating the growth of
women of color administrators, and how they influence their journeys toward senior leadership at
PWIs.
Organization of the Study
In the following chapter, I will provide an overview of the literature, which will focus on
the theoretical framework of the multidomains of leadership (Hammond, Clapp-Smith, &
Palanski, 2017) that provide the foundation of how women of color view themselves as leaders,
as well as Crenshaw’s concept of intersectionality (1989) to highlight how race and gender both
play a large part in the experiences of women of color MLMs. I will briefly review the history of
higher education and how structural barriers in IHEs existed as far back as the inception of
colleges and universities in the US. This is important to provide the contextual background on
what types of environments women of color face at IHEs and PWIs. I will also highlight the
theme of mentorship in the literature, and how women of color use mentorship as a way to
navigate these institutions and in some cases influence change at these institutions. I then
conclude the chapter with the conceptual framework that guided the data collection and analysis
phases of the study. The framework is based on Bronfenbrenner’s ecology theory, and each

11

concentric circle represents the systems that women of color experience: the microsystem, the
mesosystem, the exosystem, and the macrosystem. Mentorship and structural barriers are present
as women of color move through each system and make meaning out of their experiences
throughout this process. As such, mentorship and barriers will also be presented in the
conceptual framework.
In the third chapter, I will present the design of the study, which utilized narrative inquiry
as a form of qualitative research. I will detail the rationale for selecting participants, and I will
describe the settings from which the participants were drawn, which for this study was PWIs. I
relied on interviews and journaling as ways to collect data about the identity sense-making and
leadership aspirations of the participants. I will then describe the coding process I used when
analyzing the data, and will detail how I incorporated themes from the conceptual framework
and the literature when developing codes. Finally, I will discuss strategies used to increase the
credibility and trustworthiness of my study, the limitations and considerations of ethics for the
study.
In the fourth chapter, I will focus on the themes that emerged from the findings, which
primarily centered on four themes: mentoring and how it provided opportunities for advancement
and avenues for resistance, shared leadership being valued among women of color MLMs, a
connection to a larger purpose, and the impact of family and well-being on women of color
MLMs at PWIs. The chapter will also include an analysis of the themes and subthemes from the
findings. In the final chapter, I will then summarize the findings and tie in the implications that
resulted from the analysis. I will highlight recommendations for IHE senior leadership on how to
address components of the exosystem (PWIs) to better support women of color MLMs, in hopes

12

to also impact change at the macrosystem level. Recommendations for future research on women
of color MLMs will also be discussed in the final chapter.

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CHAPTER 2: REVIEW OF THE LITERATURE
The lack of women of color leaders in higher education has been documented through
past studies, with the focus being on faculty women of color ascending into administrative
leadership at colleges and universities (Alarcón & Bettez, 2017; Stanley, 2006; Yun et al., 2016).
Previous literature has examined the progression of women of color to leadership positions in
higher education. This chapter will review literature focusing on leadership identity development
among women of color, institutional factors that women of color face in higher education that
either facilitate or impede their advancement, and mentorship as a way to address the structural
barriers that women of color encounter at IHEs. After reviewing the literature in each of these
areas, I will end the chapter with a conceptual framework informed by this literature and which
then informed the remainder of this study.
In the research highlighted below, the participants have shared experiences in which they
felt less-than or discouraged at their institutions. Damage-centered research, as Tuck (2009)
described, focuses on addressing structural inequities that affect marginalized populations. But in
doing so, the research also frames these populations as groups that are depleted and need
additional assistance (Tuck, 2009). Although the studies included in this section may point out
institutional barriers and how they affect the personal and professional development of women of
color, I will also end the section with how women of color reframe damage-centered narratives
through their own agency. This is often in the forms of peer mentorship and mentorship as a way
to transform the structure and culture of IHEs. As Tuck (2009) also recommends, this study
attempted to employ desire-based research in that it provoked participants to think about their
hopes and desires of what IHEs could become and their role in making it so. I will discuss more
in the following chapter on how this was incorporated into the methods and data collection.

14

Leadership Identity Development among Women of Color
As Day and Harrison (2007), state “identity is important for leaders because it grounds
them in understanding who they are, their major goals and objectives and their personal strengths
and limitations” (Day & Harrison, 2007 as cited in Clapp-Smith, Hammond, & Palanski, 2018, p.
12). In the study, I did not focus on identity development, but I have incorporated leadership
identity development as this showed up in the experiences and aspirations of women of color
MLMs. Experiences and aspirations of leadership are shaped by how individuals are seen and
how they see themselves. In order to be an effective leader, one must continuously reflect on
who they are and how they are evolving in their environments. This is further complicated as
identity is socially constructed, is a product of connections and how one views themselves in
relation to others (Carroll & Levy, 2010) and in multiple contexts and environments
(Bronfenbrenner, 1979). For women of color leaders in higher education, they occupy
professional and personal spaces, and their multiple identities show up in different ways and
inform their experiences. In this section, I will be reviewing studies that focus on the experiences
of women of color administrators, leaders, and instructors in higher education, with the
participants highlighting how they are seen as women of color leaders, but also how they see
themselves in these spaces. This is important in addressing my research questions related to
women of color in mid-level management positions aspiring for leadership roles at
predominantly White institutions (PWIs). Before we can address the structural barriers, my goal
was to understand how these women position and define themselves within these structures of
higher education, and how these viewpoints then inform their desire to pursue leadership at
PWIs. I will also be using Hammond et al.’s multidomains of leadership identity and Crenshaw’s
intersectionality as theoretical frameworks that will contextualize how women of color leaders

15

make meaning of their experiences and how these meanings are grounded in their identities as
women, persons of color, and as leaders, as leadership development serves as a way to enlarge
rather than diminish aspects of their multiple identities (Carroll & Levy, 2010). The focus of the
study is on the experiences of women of color MLMs at PWIs, and will not be on the identity
development of women of color MLMs. However, it is important to first discuss how women of
color MLMs view themselves as leaders and how this then informs their leadership aspirations
within the spaces of PWIS and in higher education overall.
Multiple Dimensions of Leadership
Multidomains of leadership. Hammond, Clapp-Smith, and Palanski (2017) promote a
multidomain approach as it connects aspects in the leader’s professional and personal lives, as
events in different areas of people’s lives inform their perceptions and help shape their views on
leadership. By encouraging a “multidomain” approach, it allows individuals to look at different
experiences both within and outside themselves, and how these experiences work to make
meaning and contribute to their identities as leaders. Leader identity develops across four main
areas: meaning of being a leader, strength of identity, level of identity orientation. and
integration within one’s self-concept (Hammond et al., 2017). The four main areas are
components of the meaning-making process that Hammond et al. (2017) describe in this model,
and the act of making meaning of experiences will be included in the conceptual framework. In
the first main area of leadership identity, meaning focuses more on the person’s understanding of
what a leader is based on their own individual experiences. Strength focuses on how these people
see themselves as a leader, through ways they claim leadership or are granted leadership by
others. Levels refer to the personal and social levels of identities: personal (individual qualities
such as personality traits), relational (occupying a role that relies on a connection to another

16

individual, such as a spouse or sibling), and collective (being a member of a larger social
grouping). Integration involves the individual incorporating their own concept of self into a
leader identity. Hammond et al. (2017) argue that integration transcends professional titles and
can be seen in different areas of their personal lives (community, family, friendships). These four
main areas of meaning, strength, level and integration are present through the meaning-making
process. Although I am not focusing primarily on identity development, the concept of
sensemaking particularly with leadership identity formation has contributed to my conceptual
framework. This helped me better understand the experiences of women of color MLMs, how
they view themselves as leaders, and how leadership aspirations have been impacted through
their interactions at the PWIs. The framework involves four stages to show how this process of
leadership identity development occurs: noticing intentional and unintentional events and
triggers, evaluating and processing these events, authoring and developing new narratives based
on these observations, and enacting a new leader identity based on these narratives. This
framework is applicable to all types of leaders, and not limited to student leaders as previous
literature has focused on. Because the framework is focused on the individual’s development and
how they make meaning from events or situations they encounter, one critique of this framework
is that it puts much of the burden on the individual and removes responsibility from the
environment (in this case IHEs and PWIs) and their impact on women and women of color.
The focus of the study is not on identity development, but rather on how women of color
MLMs, their leadership aspirations, and their viewpoints on leadership in general, and how those
viewpoints have changed as a result of their experiences at the PWI. The multidomain approach
for leadership identity shows that meaning-making is integral to the leadership identity
development processes. The ways women of color administrators experience and make meaning

17

out of those experiences then inform how they see themselves as individuals as well as leaders.
This is important as it helps frame the research question on understanding the experiences of
women of color in mid-level management positions at PWIs, how they see themselves within
these structures, and how these experiences then influence their decisions to pursue leadership
opportunities at PWIs.
Intersectionality. Women of color bring with them multiple dimensions when it comes
to leadership development and their experiences as leaders then likely shape their professional
aspirations. But in order to understand how they are viewed in social contexts, we must also look
to theories such as Crenshaw’s concept of intersectionality (1989) to shed light on how race and
gender both play a large part in the experiences and treatment of women of color. Through
intersectionality, Crenshaw explains that women of color and Black women are multiply
burdened with the identities as a woman and a person of color, as discussions of antiracism and
feminism push Black women to the margins (Crenshaw, 1989). Crenshaw argued that Black
women cannot be viewed through one lens of either gender or race, because “their intersectional
identity as both women and of color within discourses that are shaped to respond to one or the
other, women of color are marginalized within both” (Crenshaw, 1990, p. 1244).
Intersectionality is a critical theoretical framework as it helps contextualize the multiple burdens
that women of color face in society at large and are then reproduced in microcosms such as IHEs
and PWIs. It opened the door for dialogue on the basis of identities interlocking and the danger
of separating concepts of race and gender when discussing identity politics. Crenshaw’s
intersectionality is critical to understanding leadership identity development among women of
color as it focuses on how systems of oppression work doubly against women of color, as
antiracist efforts and feminist efforts often leave women of color out of the central conversation.

18

To view them wholly, institutional and social structures must acknowledge their multiple
domains of leadership identity, how they interact and intersect, and how women of color make
meaning of their experiences living with multiple, intersecting identities as leaders.
Crenshaw’s argument that identities are intertwined is discussed in previous literature on
women of color in higher education. Women of color leaders have often felt the pressure to
choose one identity over the other, while also acknowledging that these identities cannot be
separated (Cobb-Roberts et al., 2017; Kawahara, 2007; Patitu & Hinton, 2003). The studies
presented in this section will show how women of color in higher education experience their
identities through the eyes of others, and how these experiences then inform how they see
themselves. A majority of research focuses on women of color faculty and their pursuit of the
college presidency. Due to the limited amount of research on women of color student affairs
professionals, the studies selected below will focus on women of color leaders who are student
affairs professionals, faculty members, and student affairs practitioners who also taught in the
classroom.
Leadership and Identity Development among Women of Color Administrators
In one study, West focused on the participants who attended the African American
Women’s Summit (AAWS), which is a professional development program dedicated to African
American women leaders in higher education (West, 2017). She conducted a qualitative study in
which she interviewed 7 participants who attended the AAWS anytime between 2006 and 2011.
The interviews took place at the NASPA national conference in 2011. West argued that African
American student affairs professionals continue to be outsiders within, in which they are viewed
as invisible in fields such as higher education administration. The summit provided a counter
space to provide African American women a place to challenge notions of being less-than and to

19

develop a positive sense of self. Her study specifically focused on the participants’ experiences
and their perspectives of the impact of the summit on African American women’s ability to resist
the notion of being outsiders within. These participants were able to make meaning out of their
experiences at the summit, and thus contribute to their overall identity as leaders. Participants
were able to reframe those feelings of alienation into feelings of agency at the summit. In order
to persist in the field of higher education administration that at times is heavily dominated by
White men and women, African American women relied on the summit as reaffirmation that
they do belong. This connects back to intersectionality as acknowledging that the multiple
aspects of identity have a role in the meaning-making of experiences. In this case, for African
American women in student affairs, they were able to reflect upon their experiences in the
workplace, noticed how their identities as Black women informed their feelings of being
included or excluded, and were then revalidated by their peers that these feelings were shared
among other Black women professionals. For Black women who may have previously felt
alienated or excluded, the summit served as a way for them to feel supported and welcomed.
West’s findings included three themes: identification and validation of oppressive behaviors,
dissemination of strategies to resist, and fortification of African American women’s standpoint.
The first theme highlighted the importance of naming the systems of oppression they
encountered in their professions, both big and small. This included acknowledging
microaggressions and non-collegial behaviors from their counterparts. The participants also
noted that it was freeing to be reassured that they were not being overly sensitive or “crazy” for
identifying those actions. The summit created a space for participants to make meaning from
these negative experiences with their colleagues. Women showed empathy toward each other,
which also led them to feel less alone and less isolated, as they normally had felt in what they

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noted as unwelcoming institutions. The concept of higher education being an unwelcoming space
will be further discussed in the following section regarding institutional barriers. The second
theme showed that participants in AAWS also saw it as an opportunity to learn strategies to help
sustain them once they left the summit. They felt that AAWS taught them how to reframe
negative situations and to reaffirm that they can overcome difficult challenges. It showed
participants that their negative experiences and challenges did not define who they were and their
ability to overcome these challenges actually contributed value to their overall leadership identity
development. The AAWS also provided resources and supportive relationship that provided
assistance even after the summit concluded. Moreover, the summit also allowed the participants
to recognize their self-worth, which then pushed them to put plans into action. The idea of self-
worth is further examined in the third theme.
The third theme is particularly relevant for my study as it revealed how this summit
reinforced women of color’s views of themselves. West highlighted testimonies from
participants who felt that the positive outcome of the African American Women’s Summit
(AAWS) was that it helped them reframe what it meant to be Black women leaders in the field of
student affairs. By seeing other senior leaders of color, they were able to visualize what they
wanted to aspire to be as student affairs administrators. Moreover, they were able to resist the
dominant ideology that is placed upon Black people and Black women that they are not fit for
leadership positions. Rather than seeing each other as what the participants commonly noted as
“angry Black women” (West, 2017, p. 16), they were able to see that Black leaders do exist and
that they are worthy of occupying these positions of influence. Through the AAWS program,
they were able to re-center what they felt was valuable and worthwhile as African American
women, while simultaneously challenging the oppressive stereotypes that burdened them as

21

African American women in the workplace. Stereotypes such as the “angry Black woman” or the
“superwoman” who did not need support were an additional burden to bear for these women in
their professional settings. The summit was a place free from those stereotypes and gave them
the opportunity to reflect and redefine what it meant for them to be Black women administrators
in student affairs. West’s study shows the importance of such programs, but also the issue of
underrepresentation of women of color leaders in higher education. It highlighted how
marginalization in higher education led to continued feelings of lack of worth in African
American practitioners in student affairs. As evidenced in West’s study, the summit was a way to
reinforce a sense of worth and pride among Black women, and this in turn motivated them to
persist and to thrive in the student affairs field. Although the AAWS should be commended in
these efforts, the program also highlighted a larger systemic problem: that women of color,
particularly Black women, have encountered challenges because of their race and their gender
and have to battle with stereotypes on a daily basis. In addition, the lack of representation means
that Black women and women of color must find support systems through external professional
development programs such as AAWS. My study focused on how women of color’s professional
experiences impacted their aspirations for leadership roles, and thus play a large part in the
leadership identity development for women of color. The participants in West’s study
acknowledged that seeing Black women in senior leadership roles motivated them to pursue
positions at the same level. Similarly, my study aimed to understand women of color
administrators and their plans for senior leadership positions, and how their own experiences
influence their professional advancement.
Oikelome (2017) also conducted a similar study by examining the experiences of African
American women and their journey to the college presidency. She conducted a qualitative study

22

in which she interviewed a total of 13 female presidents, six who identified as African American
and seven who identified as White. They served as presidents at four-year institutions, either
public or private. Out of the 13 participants, 12 came from a traditional academic background,
whereas one participant came from a student affairs practitioner background. The data were
collected through semi-structured interviews that ranged from 40 minutes to 75 minutes. In her
study Oikelome focused on the participants’ journey to the college presidency, how identifiers
such as race, gender, and sexual orientation played a role in their professional trajectories, and
the strategies that other women could employ who are in the pipeline for leadership
opportunities. Her findings fell under three themes: challenges to progression, competence
supersedes identity, and strategies for navigating the pipeline. In terms of challenges to
progression, most participants did discuss these challenges to be rooted in gender bias. But when
presented with the same question, African American women were more apt to discuss these
challenges being rooted in both identities as a woman and as a Black woman. In environments
that were mostly White or male-dominated, the Black female presidents noted that they come
into their leadership roles not with the stance of being a woman of color, but rather with the
understanding that the outer world was viewing them through a lens of race and gender. The
author also noted that when discussing gender bias among the Black female participants, in
almost all cases it then turned to experiences where the participants experienced racial bias as
well. Some noted that they felt that they needed to prove themselves more as Black women,
whereas their White male and female counterparts are accepted more as leaders. During college
president searches, one participant commented that she was informed that she did not fit the
traditional image of what a college president looked like. These comments highlight Crenshaw’s
theory of intersectionality (1990) that was previously discussed. For the Black female

23

participants in the study, they are unable to separate race or gender in their roles, highlighting the
fact that for Black women, the two identifiers are tied to each other and are forever present when
discussing how they navigate power structures. In my study, I used intersectionality as a key
component of the conceptual framework that serves as the foundation for the design and
implementation of this study.
In a collaborative autoethnographic study conducted by Boss, Karunaratne, Huang,
Beavers, Pegram-Floyd, and Tullos (2019), they focused on their roles as student affairs
administrators who also taught in the classroom. They aimed to understand their own
experiences as administrators and faculty, how they were able to make meaning of these
experiences, how these experiences taught them more about themselves as women of color
entering unwelcoming spaces, and how their experiences disrupted current institutional
structures. The study focused on 6 women of color who identified as either Asian Pacific
Islander Desi American (APIDA) or Black/African American. The study focused on individuals
who were higher education administrators, and were currently teaching or had taught in
postsecondary classrooms. Their findings were divided into two themes: understanding and
navigating identity, and understanding and navigating context. They found that their identities as
higher education administrators and instructors were viewed through a lens based on their
identities as women of color. This also shifted depending on the type of institution or context
they were in. For example, their experiences were different if they were at a predominantly
White institution (PWI) versus a campus with larger populations of students of color (Boss et al.,
2017). One participant discussed how students viewed her, and how she thought about how she
showed up in the classroom as a Black woman, with the knowledge of the anti-Blackness that
exists in society at large. She also noted that this view may be different from another woman of

24

color who was not Black entering the same space. Similar to West’s and Oikelome’s studies, this
shows that as administrators and as instructors, the participants were conscious of how they were
being viewed by their students and how these views are grounded in history of discrimination
against people of color, in this case, against Black women. Participants shared that how they
viewed their own identities was very much informed by how students viewed them as instructors
and as administrators. They acknowledged that making meaning out of their experiences as an
instructor and administrator relied on them reflecting upon their identities and how those
identities showed up in spaces such as the classroom, and that this self-reflection is critical when
thinking about ways to support students. One participant noted that in order for her to help her
students understand the complexities of race, gender and different aspects of identity, she must
do the work first and reflect on her role as a woman of color within higher education and in
society. Similarly, I focused on how identifiers such as race and gender are present in the
experiences of women of color leaders in higher education, and how the participants reflect upon
their identities and the connections between their work to help student communities, particularly
underrepresented student communities such as students of color and women students of color.
There have been multiple studies that focus on women of color experiences in leadership
positions in higher education, and how these experiences are viewed through the lens of race and
gender. In a recent report released by American Council on Education and TIAA Institute, they
surveyed college presidents and reported that only 5% of college presidencies were occupied by
women of color. They conducted semi-structured interviews with women of color presidents to
better understand their experiences, and highlighted four women of color college presidents. The
questions focused on their experiences as women of color in the presidency, with one question
asking them how they felt their identity as a woman of color impacted their role. The

25

interviewees were very conscious of their identities playing a large part in their leadership.
Roslyn Artis, president of Benedict College of Columbia, North Carolina, commented that both
woman and color matter in the context of her role as president, and oftentimes people do not see
her for who she is, and assume that she is not capable of presidential duties such as budget
oversight (Gray, 2018). Judy Sakaki, President of Sonoma State University, also commented
I don’t always have the loudest voice in the room. I’ve often been told, “You’re just
going to have to speak louder and stand up every time you speak.” Some of that I will do
in certain situations. But part of that is that we have certain images of what a leader is,
and for women of color, we don’t always fit that image, and we get criticized. If you’re
too strong, then you’re the aggressive “B-word” woman trying to throw your weight
around at the university (Gray, 2018, p. 14).
She also added that in addition to the work of a president of fund-raising and other tasks, she also
had to do this while being called derogatory names, things that her counterparts did not have to
be concerned with. These interviews show that when reflecting upon their identities and how it
has influenced their presidencies, they saw both race and gender as having played large roles.
Moreover, they have seen their identities as something that is ever-present in their day-to-day
lives. They constantly negotiate with outside images of what women of color should be and what
leaders should be. Similar to how the participants in West’s study reframed negative experiences
to create a sense of self-worth, the women of color college presidents also reframed feelings of
invisibility or feelings of not being seen as they are, or hypervisibility of being an aggressive
female president, into opportunities to represent and lead for their students. In the same report,
Judy Miner, Chancellor for the Foothill-De Anza Community College district, stated that “[t]here
really is nothing stronger than having people in leadership positions who are there and who can

26

talk about being a first-generation student—like myself—so that’s huge to our students” (Gray,
2018, p. 11). Their identities as woman of color and president then become fused into an identity
grounded in a larger purpose of serving their communities and being a representation of what can
be possible for those that may come after them. Rather than pushing these identities to the
margins, these women of color college presidents recentralized their identities as a woman of
color and attached a deeper meaning to their role as president or chancellor.
Previous research shows that leadership identity development among women of color
leaders is a prominent theme when examining their professional experiences. Past studies such as
those conducted by West, Oikelome, and Boss et al. showed how identifiers such as race and
gender are present in how women of color are seen and in turn how they see themselves in their
professional spaces. They shed light on the obstacles women of color administrators face when
advancing in their careers, such as gender and racial bias, stereotypes, and racial
microaggressions. The images that are projected upon them and the messages they receive are
important to acknowledge as they shape how they see themselves through the lens of race and
gender, as well as how they continue to develop their identities and sense of self as potential
leaders. As scholars have theorized, meaning-making is a critical part of the identity
development and leadership identity development processes (Hammond et al., 2017). How
women of color administrators process and make meaning of their experiences in the workplace
influence how they develop and create their own identity as women of color leaders. I aimed to
focus on the dynamic of identity politics in women of color administrators’ experiences,
particularly on how these experiences play a role in their advancement to leadership. In the
upcoming section, I will discuss how organizations are gendered in different ways (Acker, 1990)
and continue to perpetuate barriers based on race and gender, further posing as challenges to

27

women of color in their ascent to leadership. It is important to first examine how women of color
leaders experience these organizations and how they make meaning of these experiences, before
addressing the systemic inequities that exist within these institutions. But ultimately, as agentic
as individuals might be, they are often constrained by the institutions in which they operate.
Environmental Factors: The Institution and Structural Barriers
The identity development and leadership development of women of color in higher
education is informed by their peers and their surroundings, particularly by the institution in
which they are situated. To better understand how women of color situate themselves in these
environments, we must also take a closer examination into these structures of institutions of
higher education (IHEs). As Bronfenbrenner’s ecological theory (1979) explains, individuals’
development is influenced by their environments through the following systems: microsystems
(relationships with the immediate environment), mesosystems (relationships with major
settings), exosystems (systems that do not impact the individual directly but have connections to
the mesosystems), and macrosystems (institutional patterns) (Perron, 2017). This theoretical
framework is helpful in understanding how the institution that women of color administrators
operate within also very much influence their overall development and ability to advance into
leadership positions. In this section, I will provide context on the history of these higher
education institutions, the foundations upon which they were built, and the ideas that they
continue to perpetuate. IHEs are rooted in histories of White colonial patriarchy, and this is
important to acknowledge when addressing the structural barriers that women of color
administrators confront on their path to leadership in systems of higher education. Whereas the
previous section delved more into the experiences of women of color and how those experiences
informed their identity as leaders, this section will focus on previous studies that examine

28

women of color leaders’ experiences at colleges and universities, primarily on what they viewed
as structural barriers, and how they addressed these barriers.
History of Higher Education
The origins of colleges and universities in the US are deeply rooted in White colonialism.
The first college, Harvard College, was founded in 1636 and was intended to emulate British
educational institutions such as Oxford or Cambridge (Geiger, 2015). The colonial college
embraced the idea that the purpose of higher education was to develop colonial leaders and
reserved for the elite, while also providing a vehicle for religious expansion and the accrual of
land through the displacement of Indigenous people (Geiger, 2015; Thelin, 2004). Donors from
England provided financial support to colleges in the colonies as a way to provide a Christian
education to Native Americans who were seen as “savages” (Thelin, 2004). Not only was higher
education seen as a tool for the elite to stay in their advanced statuses, but it was also a way to
civilize and control the Native American population under the guise of philanthropy. Moreover,
the history of IHEs cannot be separated from the dark history of slavery, as the early colleges
were built by enslaved labor, were attended by owners and traders of enslaved individuals, and
taught curriculum that upheld “scientific racism” that reinforced White superiority (Stein, 2018;
Wilder, 2013). With the Morrill Land Grant Act of 1862 that gave 30,000 acres of public land to
each state senator for the purposes of developing at least one state college, it further displaced
Indigenous people from American land in order to build colleges and universities (Stein, 2018).
Patel (2015) states that
In addition to the actual land and cultural capital that is reserved for and reifies White
supremacy, IHEs also operate as White property ideologically. Although access to higher
education has long been reserved, first through code and then through cultural structures,

29

for upper middle-class Whites, the discourse of how to access education is one of
meritocracy (Patel, 2015, p. 663).
Patel then goes on to describe that meritocracy is an ideology that continues to hold up systems
of inequity as it hides systemic barriers that have long lived within higher education (Patel,
2015). As will be discussed in the following sections, legislation such as the G.I. Bill and
California Master Plan on the surface appeared to be opening up access to higher education. But
due to meritocratic processes such as admission based on academic achievement and
performance, the failure for underrepresented groups such as Black men and women to enter
colleges and universities that were now publicly viewed as more accessible, translated to
perceptions of individual failures. As a result, structural barriers were ignored or hidden from
view.
Pivotal moments and legislature. The “golden age” of higher education started due to
an increase in enrollment post-World War II, particularly driven by legislature such as the
Servicemen’s Readjustment Act of 1944, or what is better known as the G.I. Bill (Thelin, 2004).
On the surface, the G.I. Bill did expand access across economic and class statuses, but did little
to improve enrollments across race and gender. The G.I. Bill was a way to provide
unemployment benefits to those returning from the war, and these benefits included funding for
educational pursuits. As was seen when troops returned after World War I, the government
wanted to ensure that there would be benefits in place for those coming back to the US with
potentially no jobs secured. Along with weekly money that was given to returning G.I.s, they
were also given the opportunity to fund their college education. This indeed increased college
student enrollment during the period after the war, yet Black veterans who did take advantage of
the benefits were still discriminated against at the institutional level, as the Bill did not require

30

universities or colleges to apply any nondiscrimination admissions policies. More specifically,
due to the racial segregation of IHEs as a result of the Morrill Act of 1890, the Bill did not
penalize institutions for continuing discriminatory practices (Thelin, 2004). It also impacted the
number of female students enrolled in higher education post-war. During the time between the
two wars, enrollment of female students was about 40% of undergraduate student enrollment in
1940 (Thelin, 2004). Their enrollment rate dropped to 32% in 1950 (Thelin, 2004). This may
have been due to the “masculinization” of the campus, with colleges and universities wanting to
accommodate the increased enrollments of male students in fields such as math and science
(Thelin, 2004). Although the G.I. Bill ultimately changed the face of higher education in the US,
it also perpetuated discrimination practices along the lines of race and gender.
The “separate but equal” school systems particularly in the south is a good example of
how higher education was slow to integrate Black students into their college student populations,
with some schools only allowing Black student enrollments in graduate programs as it did not
taint the heart of the institution, which was undergraduate education (Thelin, 2004). Historically
Black colleges and universities (HBCUs), which are institutions created before 1964 with the
mission of educating Black people, were born after the Civil War as institutions in the south and
some institutions in the north did not admit Black people as students (Anderson, 2017; Harris,
2015). HBCUs then became home to leaders in the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s, and the
growing student unrest during the Vietnam war also gave way to student activism. In response to
social movements, particularly to the exclusion of students of color, Affirmative Action practices
that were mainly applied at that time to employing and hiring also extended to admissions into
colleges and universities. It was not until the Bakke vs. University of California Regents case of
1978 that upheld the ability for colleges and universities to use race as one of the items for

31

consideration during the application review process, but deemed quota systems as impermissible
(Harris, 2015; Thelin, 2004). Affirmative Action and the Civil Rights Act of 1967 were passed
to ensure the hiring of more faculty and administrators of color, such as Black and women of
color faculty and administrators (Mosley, 1980). Yet as a result of such legislation, another
stigma was born in that people of color and women of color were perceived to have been given
preferential treatment to be hired for administrative or faculty positions and that they would not
be in those positions had it not been for Affirmative Action (Valverde, 2011). In essence, the
message that was being communicated was that the institutions themselves did not need to be
fixed, but rather the creation of more opportunities for people of color would remedy the issue of
employment inequities in higher education (Valverde, 2011). This is problematic because by
masking the need for structural reform, individuals were easily turned into the targets as they
received more “opportunities.”
As discussed previously, individuals make meaning of their experiences, so the treatment
that they receive upon entrance to such environments then informs their own views of self.
Imposter syndrome, which was first introduced by Clance and Imes (1978) represents the idea
that many minoritized groups such as women and people of color feel that their accomplishments
were not truly earned and thus are imposters within their fields (Clance & Imes, 1978 as cited in
Edwards, 2019; Clance & Imes, 1978 as cited in Tulshyan & Burey, 2021). Imposter syndrome
has been linked to other psychosocial issues such as anxiety and depression among women and
people of color (Cokley et al., 2017). Affirmative Action has been utilized in contemporary legal
cases, particularly to argue that institutions use race unjustly and award college admissions to
students of color over White students. This was seen in Fisher v. University of Texas in 2013, in
which a White female student claimed that she was denied admission due to the fact that she was

32

White (Menand, 2020). Soon to follow was a lawsuit filed by Students for Fair Admissions, Inc.
against Harvard University for their holistic race-conscious admissions practices in 2014
(Lockhart, 2018). Federal Judge Burroughs supported Harvard in her ruling in October 2019,
stating that
It is this, at Harvard and elsewhere that will move us, one day, to the point where we see
that race is a fact, but not the defining fact and not the fact that tells us what is important,
but we are not there yet. Until we are, race conscious admissions programs that survive
strict scrutiny will have an important place in society and help ensure that colleges and
universities can offer a diverse atmosphere that fosters learning, improves scholarship,
and encourages mutual respect and understanding (Jaschik, 2019).
In the next section, the theme of advancement opportunities will be further explored as a way
that institutions continue to perpetuate these inequities among women and women of color in
higher education.
The introduction of Title IX in 1972 gave way to gender equality in educational programs
as the legislation prohibited discrimination on the basis of gender (Thelin, 2004). Although this
was a way to counteract the lack of representation of women in certain fields, it was also a way
to ensure gender parity in intercollegiate athletics, in which Title IX is seen more visibly in
higher education today. Yet even with the introduction of Title IX, women are still
underrepresented in the science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) fields and are more
heavily represented in majors such as teaching or nursing (Jaschik, 2020). Academic disciplines
are gendered, and Acker (1990) explained that organizations are themselves gendered which also
leads to continued gendered career fields and thus gendered choices of majors. The American
Association of University Women are working towards increasing representation of women in

33

the STEM fields as the current gender gap has led to gendered perceptions of math and science
among elementary and secondary students, salary inequities among men and women in STEM
fields, lack of role models for women entering STEM majors, and impact on self-confidence
among women (Corbett & Hill, 2015). In the following section I will describe how Acker argues
that organizations such as IHEs are gendered, and therefore create and uphold stereotypes and
presumptions on gender that continue to impede the progress of women in all fields of higher
education, not just STEM. It is important for women in higher education to see themselves in the
faculty, in the university leadership, and in the industry frontrunners in order to believe that these
same successes are possible for themselves.
Acker (1990) explained that organizations are gendered and that “an organization, or any
other analytic unit, is gendered means that advantage and disadvantage, exploitation and control,
action and emotion, meaning and identity, are patterned through and in terms of a distinction
between male and female, masculine and feminine” (Acker, 1990, p. 146). Because of where
power is placed in a unit and who is advantaged or disadvantaged due to the structures,
organizations are ultimately gendered. This determines what roles are characterized as masculine
or feminine, and as a result, influence gender identities outside of the organization, such as
stereotypes and assumptions of men and women in different aspects of professional and personal
arenas. To use the STEM example, because of the overrepresentation of men in STEM fields,
men are perceived to be more mathematically adept when compared to women (Corbett & Hill,
2015). Acker explained that organizations are gendered in the following five ways: construction
of labor divisions along the lines of gender where men are most likely to be positioned in the
higher levels of leadership; construction of symbols that support or sometimes oppose those
labor divisions in which masculinity is attached to possessing technical skills for instance;

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processes that reproduce gendered identities such as men being the initiators or actors and
women being the emotional support; these same processes that also influence aspects of
individual identities and social norms such as language and clothing attire; and finally gender
needs to be more present when thinking about how we understand how these social structures are
created and conceptualized through organizational theories (Acker, 1990). Acker’s argument of
gendered organizations which was based on a review of previous research along with analyses of
organizational theories, highlights how IHEs continue to be gendered. As of 2016, only 30 % of
college presidencies were occupied by women and only 5%of college presidencies were held by
women of color (Gray, 2018; Johnson, 2017). A majority of colleges and universities are led by
White men (Gray, 2018) and women are underrepresented in STEM fields (Jaschik, 2020). In
order to be competitive in different industries and to strengthen the overall economy, it is
important to have female representation in all fields and disciplines, including STEM (Pham &
Triantis, 2015). It is important to note that gender equity across all fields is interconnected, and
although I focused on the experiences of women of color leaders in higher education in this
study, these experiences and viewpoints shed light on experiences that women and women of
color face in male-dominated industries and how all organizations and institutions could better
support women of color in their professional pursuits.
The historical and social impact of Affirmative Action and Title IX are important to keep
in mind when examining the racialized and gendered barriers that women of color face in higher
education. Although different pieces of legislation were enacted to counter the previous
discrimination that women and people of color were facing in higher education, there are still
obstacles at the institutional level that continue to act as impediments to women of color and
their pursuit of leadership. As DiAngelo (2016) explains through the cycle of oppression,

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systemic oppression is set into motion by misinformation that is further propagated by the
dominant group, and then becomes socially accepted norms and prejudices. These prejudices
become further solidified and supported by institutions that uphold the prejudices in the
practices. As DiAngelo (2016) notes: “Because oppression involves the prejudice of the
dominant group plus the institutional power to maintain and enforce that prejudice, it necessarily
becomes embedded within institutions” (pp. 67-68). Legislation and policies such as the G.I.
Bill, Title IX and Affirmative Action were all intended to create access to higher education and
equal opportunity for women and people of color. Yet social inequities remain as efforts to
diversify higher education leadership have not been substantial enough. Institutional
commitment to diversity, amount of advancement opportunities, and lack of representation have
all contributed to the current status of higher education leadership being dominated by White
men. To examine current practices and inequities, we must also examine the impacts of past
legislation and polices as their legacies are very much felt today in the barriers that will be
discussed below.
Institutional Factors
Through the review of the literature, common themes of institutional factors for women
of color, both inhibiting and facilitating, can be seen in the following ways: institutional culture
and institutional commitment to diversity, career mobility and advancement opportunities, and
lack of representation in leadership which led to the hypervisibility and invisibility of women of
color. These three themes are interconnected as the institutional culture and commitment serve as
a foundation for continued inclusive practices such as hiring and promotion. Hiring and
promotion practices then also result in the number of women of color leaders that are represented
at the institution. As the research has shown, these three areas of institutional diversity, hiring

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practices, and representation in leadership very much affect the participants’ ability to succeed in
their roles and ultimately advance to higher leadership positions.
Institutional commitment to diversity and institutional culture. Gardner, Barrett, and
Pearson (2014) conducted a qualitative study on how different factors supported or impeded the
success of African American administrators at predominantly White institutions (PWIs). They
interviewed 10 male and 4 female participants who identified as African American and who were
employed at a PWI for at least five years, as five years was the benchmark for career success
based on the literature. The interviews were conducted at national conferences (NASPA, ACPA)
or were located in the same state as the interviewers. Out of the interviews, they were able to
hone in on the following themes: 1) adjustment issues (personal) – enablers of success being
mentoring relationships and barriers to success being feelings of separateness and perceptions of
prejudice; 2) institutional issues – enablers being a commitment of the institution to diversity,
recruitment strategies, and orientation and barriers to success being compensation/work
conditions, discrimination or lack of career path/identity; and 3) career dynamics – enablers of
success being professional preparation, stages of career development and the barriers to success
being lack of advancement opportunities (Gardner et al., 2014). Here, I will be focusing more on
the institutional factors and will discuss mentorship and other ways that women of color address
these structural/external barriers in the next section. Participants noted that the institution’s
commitment to diversity was either an enabler or obstacle to success. One participant noted that
he felt that his institution did not make a conscientious effort to diversify the campus through
student diversity as well as staff and faculty diversity (Gardner et al., 2014). Another participant
did note that her college president invested funds in hiring more administrators of color from
which she directly benefited, and stated that the “[president] put his money where his mouth

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was” and created a salary pool dedicated for diversity hiring (Gardner et al., 2014, p. 242). The
institutional commitment to diversity played a large part in hiring, as exhibited by the
participants’ observations. Whereas one noted that he did not feel that his college was
prioritizing a diverse community, another participant felt that her college president valued
diversity and devoted funding to ensure that the staff was diverse as well. This showed that when
executed effectively, the institution’s commitment to diversity can be viewed as an enabler of
success to women of color administrators. However, if the institution does not truly enact its
values of diversity, then the commitment to diversity as seen in mission statements act as an
empty promise. As Ahmed (2012) states,
Institutionalization was not simply defined by practitioners in terms of the formal or
explicit goals, values, or priorities of an institution. Many spoke about institutionalization
in terms of what institutions “tend to do,” whatever it is they say they are doing or should
be doing. (Ahmed, 2012, pp. 24-25).
The administrators in the study recognized that an actual commitment to diversity required the
institution to do diversity rather than to say diversity, and that is often in the form of funding and
hiring.
One participant noted that institutional culture played a big role in his professional
success. He served in his role at a PWI in the northeast for about 10 years, and stated that he had
to “[learn] to negotiate—politically negotiate—a place in a predominantly White institution [is
important] because learning how to negotiate that environment becomes extremely vital to one’s
success. Knowing how to fight the battles, especially when you are a person of color who is
perceived as the spokesperson for other persons of color…[understanding] what issues you take
on and what issues you don’t” (Gardner et al., 2014, p. 242). The participant noted that he had to

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be aware of his surroundings and the types of battles he would be entering, how he navigated that
and what political strategies he needed to employ. The institutional culture of PWIs acted as an
unwelcoming environment for historically marginalized populations, and as a result, Black
administrators had to be highly cognizant of their surroundings and needed to be vigilant with
their behaviors in these spaces.
Gomez, Ocasio, Lachuk, and Powell (2015) also noted the importance of understanding
the culture of an institution. Their study focused on staff members of color at a predominantly
White institution. The overarching theme was how the participants viewed the campus as a
“battlefield,” in which certain alliances must be made in order to survive. One participant in their
study described her experience of working on a committee that helped develop policies around
diversity. In order to be effective, she commented that she needed to identify individuals who
could serve as allies, and also understand that the culture required a level of strategy on her part
to ensure that her goal was accomplished (Gomez et al., 2015). In both studies, the interviewees
noted how the environment was a battlefield, and that they needed to decide which battles to
engage in, how to create alliances, in order to be effective in their roles. This showed that the
institutional culture created a setting in which minoritized groups felt that in order to persist in
the field, they needed to develop survival tactics, something their White counterparts did not
have to be burdened with. The culture of university is oftentimes difficult to navigate and also
difficult to change, because it is so entrenched in the historical foundations of that institution
(Cabrera et al., 2017).
Career mobility and advancement opportunities. Muñoz (2009) conducted a study on
Latina American community college leaders who fit the role of chief executive officers such as
chancellors or presidents at varying community colleges. She surveyed 22 participants and out of

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this number, she interviewed 13 participants. The female participants identified as Latina,
Hispanic, Mexican-American, Cuban, Chicana, Nicaraguan, and multiethnic. All participants
served at public institutions, and 68% stated that they worked at institutions deemed as Hispanic-
Serving Institutions (HSIs). The research questions focused on what they felt had the most
impact on their career success, how they overcame barriers and challenges on their paths to the
presidency, what practices or policies would help create more inclusive environments on their
campuses, and how they felt higher education administration has changed in the last 10 years for
Latinas. When discussing challenges that the Latina presidents faced and how they were able to
overcome them, they shared that preparedness was key. This involved academic credentials such
as a doctoral degree, as well as thorough knowledge and experience outside of education, such as
relationship-building with trustees. One participant noted that
From serving on search committees [she observed] that people are looking for people
who are like them. They are most comfortable with people who look like them, and talk
like them. Therefore, anyone who is different has to have more to outshine and overcome
that (Muñoz, 2009, p. 167).
This showed that biases such as affinity bias, which is defined as hiring someone that exhibits
qualities similar to that of the interviewer (Turnbull, 2014), was present during the selection
processes that she was involved with. Given the participant’s experience, she felt that the
selection process was already flawed in that others who did not reflect the committee members
or were not similar to committee members may have experienced additional burdens to
outperform. Other participants also echoed the need to have early interventions in the areas of
recruitment and preparation of leaders of color in order to counter these obstacles that may be
faced at the application and selection process. One president stated that they “really don’t talk

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about career options in administration. We don’t talk about it early enough. It’s a difficult system
to navigate” (Muñoz, 2009, p. 168). As noted earlier, higher education served as another system
to navigate, and part of that system was the entry way or pipeline into the higher education field,
particularly for those entering from outside the field. One strategy that the participants were
suggesting was preparation for aspiring leaders before entering administrative roles. This is a
way to combat the inequities laden within the system, such as biased hiring practices and lack of
opportunities for underrepresented groups. Similarly, Gardner et al. (2014) also found themes of
lack of advancement opportunities among their participants. One participant noted that it was
“subtle” and described it in the following ways:
Some would call it institutional. [When] you look at promotion, we are not the first to be
considered even though we may be the best qualified. They don’t know what my need
areas are or what my ambitions might be, because we didn’t have those conversations
(Gardner et al., 2014, p. 242).
He also alluded to the institutional responsibility of the exclusion of Black administrators from
discussions of advancement. Not only were they not considered for promotions, but investment
in their professional aspirations through the form of conversations between administrators and
their supervisors were also absent. This signified that these practices were not a part of the
institutional goals or values, and thus acted as barriers for Black administrators at PWIs.
Studies have shown that when reviewing applications and resumes, female candidates
with names that sounded Black required eight additional years of experience to receive callbacks
when compared to other candidates with White-sounding names (Williams, 2014). Valverde
(2011) also stated that women of color were often overlooked, despite having the same or more
experience or credentials, because of how they performed in the subjective portions of the

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selection process, such as interviews. Griffin (2019) also reviewed research literature and found
themes of barriers in hiring and recruitment among men and women of color for faculty
positions. Although institutions expressed a desire to diversify faculty, a majority of institutions
did not have formal policies or procedures in place to ensure that candidates of color are
represented in the applicant and finalist pool (Griffin, 2019). This shows that institutional
practices such as hiring and recruitment can impact the advancement and career mobility of
women of color. Without intentional and directed efforts towards hiring and recruiting women of
color in faculty and administrative positions, the numbers of women of color being represented
in faculty, staff, and leadership positions in higher education has remained low. In 2016 the
number of underrepresented minority faculty members rose to 13%, but only 10%of tenured
faculty positions were held by people of color (Flaherty, 2016). Moreover, only 5%of college
presidents were women of color (Gray, 2018). Due to the limited research on the hiring practices
for administrators of color in higher education, my goal was to better understand the experiences
of women of color administrators in mid-level management positions in their professional
journeys and how they are able to navigate these systems, upon entry as well as once they are at
the institution. By examining how women of color experience these systems at entry-point as
well as through advancement opportunities, it will shed light on what IHEs are doing effectively
or what processes and procedures need to be improved upon in order to ensure an inclusive
environment for women of color that will ultimately facilitate their professional growth.
Representation and visibility. A common theme in many research studies conducted on
women of color administrators aspiring for advanced roles is the theme of lack of representation
in leadership positions. Tying back to the institutional culture, the priorities and commitment of
the institution can be viewed in their financial priorities and hiring practices (Gardner et al.,

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2014). Women of color at institutions of higher education are often the only ones in a department
or unit, and become tokenized, acting as a representative of a whole group. They are also highly
scrutinized, leaving little room for error (Molina, 2008). On the other end of the spectrum,
women of color leaders have experienced microaggressions in the form of feeling invisible at
these institutions and felt overlooked for opportunities for advancement.
Hypervisibility and invisibility. Hannum, Muhly, Shockley-Zalabak, and White (2015)
found themes of hypervisibility and invisibility as they studied the barriers or sources of
encouragement and discouragement that senior women leaders experience on their journey to
leadership roles. They conducted 35 semi-structured interviews to gather data for their study. 20
participants were White women, nine African American women, one Latina, two Native
American women, one Latina and Native American biracial woman, and one who identified as
“other.” 10 of the participants were presidents, five vice presidents or vice chancellors, five
provosts, and the remaining five held other leadership positions such as dean or chief diversity
officer. The interviews were transcribed and coded. 15 themes were identified and further broken
down into themes and subthemes: barriers to leadership (not having leadership identity, lack of
opportunity/support, discouragement/sabotage, different expectations for men and women);
support for leadership (formal leadership development, early leadership experiences,
encouragement/support, having a role model), negative aspects (scrutiny and criticism, time
demands, pressure of accountability, broad scope, isolation, not fitting in or being heard),
positive aspects (having an influence, making an impact, broad scope, power/autonomy, being a
role model). Although they utilized a qualitative approach for data collection, SPSS was used to
conduct Pearson’s chi-square test of independence in order to see if there was a relationship
between the themes and the participants’ racial background (Hannum et al., 2015). What the

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researchers found was that more women of color (67%) shared experiences of scrutiny and
criticism, in comparison to White women (20%), and that more women of color (73%) also
expressed having less opportunities and support in contrast to White women (35%) (Hannum et
al., 2015). Similar to the studies mentioned in this section, the themes of scrutiny and criticism as
well as lack of opportunities were seen more prominently among the women of color
respondents. The increased sense of being scrutinized is connected to feelings of hypervisibility
and the “superwoman” stereotype that African American had expressed, that they felt pressure to
overperform and avoid looking incompetent. Simultaneously, women of color shared that they
did not feel they were supported or received opportunities to advance. While White women
experience varying levels of obstacles during their journeys toward leadership, women of color
may be experiencing these hurdles at a higher frequency. This showed that they were
hypervisible when it came to feelings of being criticized, but felt invisible when it came to the
discussion of advancement.
Mena and Vaccaro (2017) also expanded on the feelings of invisibility through the form
of microaggressions that women of color experienced at PWIs. The study focused on women of
color who held roles as faculty or staff at PWIs in the Northeast of the US. Like Gardner, Barrett,
and Pearson (2014), the researchers aimed to understand the types of oppression experienced at
PWIs by women of color, and found that these oppressive experiences came in the form of
microaggressions within the institution, their professions, and their communities. They
conducted a critical ethnographic study with 13 participants, 10 identified as Black or African
American, two as Asian, and one as Latina. The researchers conducted interviews that lasted
about 50 minutes to 120 minutes, and completed six 2-hour observations of organizational
meetings that were open to those who identified as women of color (Mena & Vaccaro, 2017).

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They found that the participants experienced three types of environmental microaggressions
(campus, disciplinary/professional, and community invisibility) and two forms of interpersonal
microaggressions (professional and leadership invisibility). For this section, I will be focusing
more on the campus and leadership microaggressions as it pertains to the institutional barriers
that are experienced by women of color at PWIs. The participants noted feeling invisible on their
campus as they were often the only faculty member or staff member of color in their departments
or at particular meetings. The composition of one particular department did not change
drastically over time, as one participant noted that she had been in her role for about 20 years and
upon starting her role she was one of four faculty members of color. Twenty years later, that
number increased only to 16 faculty members of color (Mena & Vaccaro, 2017). In addition,
even when participants felt like they were more visible within their departments, some felt a
level of leadership invisibility as they attended campus-wide meetings and felt invisible. They
also reported being overlooked or passed over for leadership opportunities at the campus-wide
level, and attributed it to the possibility of being a woman of color at a PWI (Mena & Vaccaro,
2017). As of 2016, only 30% of college presidencies were occupied by women, and about 5%
were women of color (Gray, 2018; Johnson, 2017), so at a larger scale, women of color are still
underrepresented at leadership positions in higher education. The themes of lack of
representation as well as lack of advancement opportunities show that structurally, it is important
to ensure that current leadership roles are occupied by women of color while also providing
ongoing opportunities, thus exhibiting the institution’s commitment to diversity.
Depending on the number of women of color represented in leadership at IHEs,
participants expressed the feeling of being hypervisible as they were the only woman or person
of color within their unit or organization. What was also notable was that despite being the only

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women of color, participants also expressed the feeling of being invisible as they were not
considered for leadership opportunities. This showed that although the institution showed their
commitment to diversity through the hiring of these women of color, the institutions failed on
continued diversity in action as IHEs did not provide sufficient opportunities for these women of
color to advance once at the college. For my study, I aim to examine these themes of
opportunities and scrutiny among women of color in mid-level management positions at PWIs.
The institutional culture, the hiring practices and advancement opportunities, and the
representation of women of color leaders among IHEs are all interconnected. The institutional
commitment to diversity is often displayed in the institution’s mission statement (Ahmed, 2012).
Moreover, Ahmed adds that commitment requires action from the institution and that what is
stated on paper is to act an accountability tool to make sure that institutions are living up to that
commitment (Ahmed, 2012). This is often operationalized by hiring diverse faculty, such as
through cluster hires (Freeman, 2019). Through concerted efforts such as hiring and promotion
directly focused on women and men of color, colleges and universities may be able to increase
the pool of applicants of color and potentially lead to an increase in number of women of color in
leadership positions. By addressing institutional barriers, the goal is to counteract definitions of
leadership being White male-centered, while also reshaping organizational structures and
behaviors. In order to create truly inclusive environments for women of color administrators to
be able to thrive, the institutional cultures must be transformed, from changing practices as early
as preparation and recruitment, all the way to promotion opportunities aimed at advancing more
women of color to senior leadership at their institutions.

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Mentorship
In environments laden with obstacles and structural barriers, mentorship serves as one
way for women of color to provide support systems to each other and to combat overall
challenges they encounter professionally. The theme of mentorship is prominent among previous
studies conducted on women of color faculty and administrators and how they have utilized
mentorship as a strategy to navigate IHEs, to advance professionally, and in some cases to
transform the institutional culture. Past researchers have recommended that IHEs invest in and
provide formal mentorship programs specifically directed towards women or people of color
(Chang et al., 2014). In this section, the studies that will be presented will show that formal and
particularly informal mentorship programs have shown to be beneficial to the persistence and
advancement of women of color in higher education. Through traditional and nontraditional
forms of mentorship, women of color were able to learn from colleagues and receive access to
vital resources that would otherwise not be available to them. For the purposes of this study,
traditional mentoring will be defined as a hierarchical, top-down structure in which a mentor
who has positional power over the mentee supports the mentee(s) in achieving their professional
and personal goals in the following ways: faculty member supporting graduate students, senior
faculty supporting new faculty members, and administrative supervisors supporting their staff
(Merriam et al., 1987). Nontraditional mentoring relationships are those that are found outside
of these power relationships and instead, nontraditional mentoring takes on a more lateral form
where knowledge and resources are shared among peers and colleagues, in a more horizontal
structure. Both forms of mentorship will be discussed more in this section. At colleges and
universities, particularly at PWIs, the environment can be unwelcoming and isolating, which
makes it even more vital that mentorship among women of color faculty and administrators

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exists. Much of the literature focuses on faculty mentorship, as mentorship is the form of
socialization into academia (Alarcón & Bettez, 2017; Stanley, 2006; Yun et al., 2016). However,
mentorship also serves as a critical way for women of color administrators to navigate systems
within IHEs, which then allows them to be effective in their roles while also serving as a
launching pad to additional professional opportunities. Moreover, nontraditional forms of
mentorship also served as a way for women of color to critique and challenge the norms of
higher education structures of power. In this section, the meaning of mentorship, the benefits of
non-traditional or lateral forms of mentorship, and mentorship as a form of activism will be
explored.
Chang, Longman, and Franco (2014) used a collaborative autoethnographic approach for
their study as they delved into the experiences of academic and administrative leaders of color at
various faith-based colleges and universities. The study focused on participants who identified as
persons of color and who also attended a leadership development institute titled LDI-MEL, with
the researchers being among the participants. The positions of the participants ranged from roles
such as dean, program director, and department chair, with some holding faculty positions
simultaneously. The aim of the study was to focus on academic and administrative leaders of
color, their viewpoints on professional and personal mentorship and its impact on their
development as leaders. Fourteen participants from 12 different institutions were involved in the
study from July 2011 until December 2011. Out of the 14 participants, 11 identified as female
and three as male. Four participants also identified as African-American/Afro-Caribbean
Americans, two Asian Americans, one European-American, four Latino Americans, and three
multiracial participants. The faith-based institutions were also considered PWIs. Data collection
was divided into three phases: reflections through essay and journal prompts, online focus groups

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held once or twice a month, and review of supplementary documents such as LDI-MEL
application data and post-institute surveys. Through the data analysis phase, they were able to
break down the themes into the following: leaders of color utilizing a constellation of
developmental relationships as support systems; individual perspectives on mentorship,
leadership and power structures; and institutional factors that facilitated or impeded mentorship.
The researchers found that leaders of color at these institutions generally found benefit in
a wide-network of mentors. The participants had difficulty identifying individual mentors as they
viewed support through a “constellation of developmental relationships” (Chang et al., 2014, p.
378). They did comment that they benefited from their traditional “heavy-handed” mentoring
relationships, which were seen in their doctoral advisors or supervisors that guided them in their
professional and academic careers during a period of time. But they also attributed their success
to personal, “light-handed” mentorship relationships with peers as well as colleagues, family
members, and friends outside of the professional field. This shows that they are not bound by
formal or traditional types of mentorship, and they saw benefits in multiple mentoring
relationships, both professional and personal. For leaders of color, finding support in a number or
areas of their lives is crucial for the ongoing success as they saw lessons learned in personal
circles acting as foundations for their professional successes, and this theme will be further
discussed in this section as this appeared in other studies on mentorship among women of color.
Although the overarching theme was that mentors from different sources and spheres
were instrumental to their growth, the participants’ responses diverged as individual viewpoints
on relationships, mentorship, leadership, and power structures showed that the professional
experiences of women of color in the study were unique when compared to their male
counterparts. The motivation to find different kinds of mentorship stemmed from how

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mentorship was defined by participants. One finding from the study was that male participants
viewed mentorship as a way to advance professionally, yet the female participants did not
actively seek mentors, as they did not see mentorship rooted in professional development.
Moreover, the female participants were not accustomed to viewing mentorship as something they
needed to proactively seek professionally, as traditional forms of mentorship such as those
provided by a supervisor or doctoral advisor were assigned to them. Most of the female
participants also had trouble seeing themselves as a leader and thus this impacted their
viewpoints on mentorship itself. One female participant noted that
I see myself as a great follower and I tell myself that I prefer to follow than lead.
However, looking back over my journey I see leadership all along the way. It makes me
ask the question, “Why am I so afraid of being identified as a leader when (clearly) I am
a leader?” (Chang et al., 2014, p.381).
This statement reflects what was noted earlier about self-perceptions and how it is often rooted in
gendered definitions of leadership. As activist Marian Wright Edelman once said, “you cannot be
what you cannot see.” Women who were already exhibiting leadership qualities had difficulty
seeing themselves as leaders. As mentioned earlier, the lack of representation of women of color
leaders in IHEs may perpetuate the idea that women of color cannot be leaders, as expressed by
the participant in Chang et al.’s (2014) study. Because there was a reluctance on seeing
themselves as leaders, many of the women participants did not seek out mentorship as a form of
career advancement in comparison to men who did see mentorship as a way to advance
professionally. In addition, the female participants equated their current leadership roles as a
form of service and attributed their ascent to being pushed by others to respond to the needs of
their institution. They were not interested in self-promoting, and did not seek out advanced

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leadership roles as they were content in their mid-level management positions of either
department chair or program director.
Select female participants also noted that they valued self-reliance and sought out more
lateral mentoring relationships versus top-down mentoring relationships. Similar to what was
noted in a previous study, women of color, particularly Black women, felt the added pressure to
overperform. By seeking out help through traditional mentoring relationships such as through
their supervisors, they feared appearing incompetent in the professional space. One female
participant noted that growing up in the US as an African-American woman, she was taught to
figure out things for herself and not ask for assistance, and that this was especially important for
her at a PWI. In traditional mentoring relationships that are hierarchical, mentees were expected
to be of a lower position, with the mentor being more advanced or in a higher leadership
position. Although there are benefits such as providing advice and support to those seeking out
similar roles in the future, in this study, the women of color participants tended not to seek
traditional forms of mentorship. Rather, they sought out more lateral relationships as a form of
support, as they felt more comfortable being vulnerable with peers and colleagues which were
more informal and non-traditional types of mentorship. Through peer relationships, they were
still able to receive support while also maintaining their feeling of self-reliance. In addition, the
female participants also noted that they felt more comfortable in a shared model of governance
and relied on a team to help accomplish goals and often looked for opportunities to collaborate
with “teammates” rather than finding a mentor who occupied a higher status or leadership role.
This is in contrast with the male participants who expressed very clearly their reasons to pursue
mentorship as a way to advance professionally. The female participants found a greater benefit in

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lateral, more collaborative relationships for professional and individual growth, versus top-down,
hierarchical relationships.
The researchers also examined how institutions acted as a facilitator or impediment to
mentoring relationships. Outside of traditional mentoring relationships such as those provided by
their direct supervisors, the participants noted that the lack of representation in leadership
positions at their institutions acted as an obstacle in seeking out mentors who are more advanced
or even in similar positions as them. Sometimes being the only staff member of color at their
division or department added to their feelings of isolation at the PWIs, with some participants
noting that they did not feel that they mattered at their particular institutions. As a result, the
LDI-MEL leadership institute acted as a “breath of fresh air” as they did not see visible support
systems for people of color at their institutions. Having been able to participate in the institute,
the participants noted that they vowed to pay it forward and take on mentees of color in hopes to
counteract the institutional barriers that administrators of color experience at PWIs.
This study shows that mentorship among leaders of color is very much dependent on the
individual and their viewpoints on the benefits of mentorship, as well as the power structures that
are inherent in these relationships. For women and women of color, the perceived value of
mentoring relationships is reliant on the structure, whether they are hierarchical or lateral, and
also how much they can maintain their feeling of self-reliance. The findings showed that women
of color saw more benefit in lateral relationships over traditional, hierarchical structures. They
prioritized and sought out relationships in which they felt supported by peers, over top-down
relationships in which the mentee gained from the social capital or the knowledge bestowed upon
them by their mentor. For my study, I used these themes of non-traditional structures of
mentorship to explore how they produced an alternative way for women of color to find support.

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Indirectly, these non-traditional forms of mentorship also give way to a form of activism, a way
for women of color to actively fight against hierarchies that were previously imposed upon them.
The theme of mentorship among women of color being multifaceted and non-traditional
is further explored in Tran’s (2014) study, which focused on women of color leaders in higher
education. The themes that were found were that mentorship among the female leaders of color
were not always visible, that it is often self-initiated and is constant, and most importantly, it is
multidimensional and found in different arenas of the individual’s personal and professional lives
(Tran, 2014). The participants in Tran’s study were four women who identified as Asian
American, Latina, and African-American and held roles such as chancellor, vice president,
president, and director at a Hispanic-Service Institution (HSI). The study focused only on four
participants, but this may also suggest that women of color leaders at HSIs, particularly
baccalaureate and doctoral degree-granting institutions, are still low in number. Tran conducted a
semi-structured interview which each participant, which ranged from 30 to 90 minutes in length.
Her goal was to better understand the role of informal and formal mentorship played in their
professional growth. The findings that Tran focused on were that mentorship is not visible,
mentorship is a constant, mentorship is self-initiated, and mentorship is multidimensional.
One of the findings that was noteworthy and very much supported the claims made in
Chang et al.’s (2014) study was that mentorship was not an idea that was widely visible among
women of color. One of the participants noted that leaders would voluntarily reach out to her and
provide their mentorship, but in her naiveté, she did not realize that it was mentorship. She also
attributed her lack of knowing to various factors, such as lack of role models that looked like her,
as she noted

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As an Asian woman, the word “leader” never entered my mind…It’s like you do not
think of it, because you do not have images in front of you so do you do not exhibit that,
therefore you do not even know (Tran, 2014, p. 307).
Hammond et al.’s (2017) multi-domains of leadership can be seen in this participant’s statement
in the fact that women of color develop their definitions of leadership through their experiences,
how they see themselves as leaders, how others view them as leaders, and their relationships
with others. The outreach from other leaders was not an obvious form of mentorship, as they did
not recognize themselves as up-and-coming leaders worthy of being mentored. Similar to the
female participants in the study conducted by Chang et al. (2014), the concept of mentorship was
not something to which they were socialized, and as a result their ideas of leadership and
mentorship were very much dependent on what was available to them. One of the structural
barriers discussed earlier was the lack of representation of women of color in leadership
positions at IHEs. Due to the lack of representation of women and women of color leaders in
higher education, it perpetuated these misconceptions that they cannot be leaders. There was not
an abundance of women of color leaders to reference, and therefore it was not apparent that this
is something that women of color could aspire to. As a result, the participants also noted having
to seek out mentorship in order to receive assistance, whether that is with graduate school or with
career advancement, and that mentorship in some cases needed to be self-initiated. This is
somewhat contrary to the findings in Chang et al.’s (2014) study, as the female participants in
their study noted that they did not actively seek out mentors. One participant in Tran’s study
noted that she did benefit from the informal mentorships provided in her early career as a
student, but realized that once she entered the student affairs field as an administrator that she
would need formal mentors that would help her professionally. Although one common finding

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among women of color was that lack of mentors may have indirectly informed their ideas of
what leadership and mentorship should look like, the four participants in Tran’s study showed
that in order to advance professionally, they oftentimes had to take the initiative to reach out to
mentors who served in roles that they would hope to achieve in the future.
The support oftentimes took the form of multiple mentors, and similar to what
aforementioned scholars have found, mentorship among women of color was multi-faceted, with
mentoring relationships spanning outside of professional circles and into personal, familial and
religious circles. The participants shared that they did not restrict mentoring relationships to
traditional hierarchies, or top-down structures. They sought out mentorship among peers and
colleagues, and they also saw mentorship through “mentoring up” and providing guidance to
their supervisors when needed. This concept of mentorship being multidimensional further
echoes the finding from Chang et al. (2014) in that mentorship among women of color is not
seen in traditional terms. Mentorship was perceived to be more valuable when it reflected a
lateral structure in which knowledge was shared across colleagues versus given from top leaders
down to mentees. The value in mentorship was then reframed from solely professional
advancement but also for personal fulfillment and support. It was critical that the participants
found support in multiple arenas, such as in familial, religious and personal circles as this helped
them continue working towards their professional goals. More importantly, Tran also found that
the participants viewed mentorship as a constant, and that it did not stop once they achieved their
professional roles. They felt that they had a great deal to learn even in their roles as chancellor,
vice president, president or director. They also felt that they had a responsibility to provide
mentorship to other women of color who are also aspiring to their professional roles, as
continued mentorship was critical if they wished to change the landscape of higher education in

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terms of the diversity of leadership and the impact that women of color can create on their
campuses.
Another overarching theme that Tran had found in the participants’ responses was the
call for macro-level change. Tran proposed a re-envisioning of mentorship in higher education
and for institutions to change the support systems available for women of color leaders. Because
of the multidimensionality of mentorship relationships exhibited by the participants, Tran stated
that institutions and individuals should view the idea of mentorship with a critical lens, and that
mentors and mentees do not benefit from a standardized, one-size-fits-all approach. In addition,
Tran called for a repurposing of mentorship, that it should not only be a way to address
institutional obstacles for women of color leaders, but also be used as a vehicle for institutional
change. One participant commented on utilizing mentorship across with colleagues and
mentoring up with her supervisors as her strategy to address challenges she faced in her role, but
inadvertently she was also changing the dynamic of leadership roles at her institution and as a
result impacting the makeup of how power flows within that structure.
Mentorship as a form of activism can also be seen in other studies related to women of
color and their professional growth. Alarcón and Bettez (2017) conducted a collaborative
autoethnography on the experiences of Latina faculty at a PWI. Their goal was to build upon the
growing literature of mentorship among Latina faculty. The work was focused on Latino/a
faculty at HSIs, but Alarcón and Bettez aimed to add to the research through their
autoethnography at PWIs. They argued that traditional mentorship promoted traditional research
and pushed forward traditional ways of thinking. They wanted to show that through non-
traditional methods of mentorship, future research efforts could be more social justice-oriented
(Alarcón & Bettez, 2017). Although they noted the limitations of autoethnography as being

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highly personalized, they also shared insights on what women of color faculty experienced at a
PWI, and how mentorship served as a tool to challenge norms of mentorship, and reconstruct it
into a model that is more culturally responsive to faculty of color. Their study is grounded in
multiple theoretical frameworks: disidentification theory, muxerista mentoring, and cultural
capital wealth frameworks (Alarcón & Bettez, 2017). Disidentification which was introduced by
Muñoz (1999) was used by the scholars to not necessarily align with or go against the
institutional norms of mentorship, but was more an attempt to restructure mentorship from within
the structures of the academy. They also incorporated the idea of muxerista mentoring, as
muxerista referred to Latina womanist or feminist thought. Through muxerista mentoring, Latina
faculty members who mentor each other helped each other advance professionally, but also
helped push forward the overall social justice causes of the Latina feminist movement. The
cultural capital framework advanced by Yosso (2005) was also used to ground their mentorship
model, as they argued that Latina faculty members already carry with them a wealth of cultural
capital that is then shared with their peers. The two researchers met biweekly in writing group
sessions with the purposes of mentoring, check-ins, story-sharing, and collaborative projects.
Their primary source of data was reflective journals, with emails, notes from meetings and work
from the collaborative projects serving as the secondary source of data. Their findings were
based on major themes that came from their collaborations in writing, research, teaching and
service that spanned the course of two academic years. These are shared through counter-stories,
which was a way to highlight the stories of marginalized groups and challenge the narratives of
the dominant groups (Solórzano & Yosso, 2002). The counter-stories of the two women of color
faculty members challenged the norms of higher education by showing that through their non-
traditional mentoring relationship, they were able to bring about institutional change by shifting

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the focus of the faculty and the curriculum that is taught. One limitation is that these stories
highlighted experiences of the two researchers as faculty members. Although they may be unique
to the experience of faculty members, there are valid lessons that are transferrable and relatable
to women of color staff members within IHEs as similar structures related to power and
governance are present.
The writing group sessions that they organized were a way for the two faculty members
to help each other while also building and strengthening the relationship with each other. Being
that they were two out of three Latina faculty in the school of education within a PWI, creating a
space that was not White was of high importance to both of them. Although one of the scholars
had been at the institution longer and the other was new to the school, the two provided guidance
to each other as they both navigated political issues within the academy. In structure, it appeared
more like a traditional form of mentorship. But because guidance was being provided by both
members and was more lateral, it served as a non-traditional form of mentorship, particularly at
the institution which was predominantly White. The writing group acted as a counter space that
further flattened the structure of mentorship, showing that the traditional top-down model of
mentorship was not applicable, and in fact hindered genuine relationship-building to occur
between the two Latina faculty members. They also expanded on how their relationship helped
with the “Browning” of spaces at the PWI through infusing work that focused on indigenous and
people of color in their pedagogy courses as well as being a catalyst for change when one of
them was asked to facilitate the faculty retreat. They took this as an opportunity to collaborate
and to re-shift the focus of the retreat to equity, and were able to start continual dialogue on how
to center social justice in their work as a school. As Tran noted earlier, mentorship can be used as
a tool to reshape the institution, which was evident in Alarcón and Bettez’s mentoring

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relationship highlighted in their collaborative autoethnographic study. They were able to
influence the institution, a PWI, that they occupied through their muxerista mentoring
relationship. In my study, I aim to show that women of color administrators use mentorship as a
way to address the structural barriers that they encounter, but that they also reshape the
institution through their collaborations and activism. By using the themes found in this study and
previous research, I studied how mentorship provides a safe space for women of color leaders in
unwelcoming and/or hostile environments, while also examining how these women use
mentorship as a vehicle to combat oppressive systems and barriers found in these settings in
hopes to recreate these institutions into spaces that can be welcoming to other women of color
who will follow them.
Conceptual Framework
When considering whether and how women of color ascend to positions of leadership in
institutions of higher education, several influences must be taken into consideration. As previous
literature suggested, women of color leaders have developed their professional and personal
identities through their interactions with colleagues and the institution. Making meaning from
these experiences shape their own views of themselves as individuals and as leaders (Hammond
et al., 2017). Contextual influences such as experiences and interactions with family members,
peers, as well as others’ perceptions of an individual’s identity such as sexual orientation, would
then filter through the individual’s meaning-making filter. This would mean messages about
gender norms (societal messages, messages from family and friends), experiences that highlight
the intersections of identity such as race and gender, would move through the filter and
contribute to their leadership identity development.

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For this study, the filter I explored was through an intersectional lens, in which women of
color are processing their experiences through their viewpoints of being both a woman and a
person of color, as both identities are intertwined and cannot be separated from each other when
reflecting upon their positions in different spaces and discourses (Crenshaw, 1990). Hammond et
al. (2017) developed a multidomain approach to understanding a leader’s development, and
focused on four areas of leader identity: meaning, strength, level and integration (Hammond et
al., 2017). The framework involves four stages to show how this process of leadership identity
development occurs: noticing intentional and unintentional events and triggers, evaluating and
processing these events, authoring and developing new narratives based on these observations,
and enacting a new leader identity based on these narratives (Hammond et al., 2017). Although
their identity development as women of color was not the central focus of the study, Hammond
et al.’s multidomains of leadership helped guide the conceptual framework, specifically
highlighting how women of color viewed leadership as a result of their experiences within each
system. Women of color administrators in higher education make meaning out of their
experiences within their personal circles, professional spaces, and within the institution at large.
How these experiences mold and shape their individual and leadership identity was further
explored in the study. The multidomains of leadership helped inform the conceptual framework
and the interview protocol, as the women of color MLMs and their viewpoints of leadership were
impacted by their experiences within their units (mesosystem) and at their PWIs (exosystem).
The concept of meaning-making as a process to facilitate leadership identity development is
visualized in the framework in Figure 1, as women of color move through each system and make
meaning of their experiences in these spaces.

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Bronfenbrenner’s ecological theory
The sense-making process is continual and fluid, and women of color have different
experiences in different spaces. These experiences, I contend, shape their aspirations for senior
leadership roles within PWIs. For this purpose, Bronfenbrenner’s ecological theory was used to
show how each system or level in which women of color inhabit has inhibitors and facilitators
which impact women of color’s individual personal and professional growth (Perron, 2017). The
concentric circles as displayed in Bronfenbrenner’s ecological theory demonstrate how each
level of environment (each system) interacts with the others (Perron, 2017). These levels and
interactions have a direct or indirect effect on the individual. Adapting Bronfenbrenner’s model
to this specific study, the conceptual framework in Figure 1 also shows the inhibitors and
facilitators to individuals’ professional success that exist at each level or system, which then also
informs their leadership aspiration. As women of color higher education professionals navigate
each system, they make meaning of their experiences through an intersectional lens, and each
experience contributes and helps shape their viewpoints on leadership. I used the framework to
guide the interview protocols and develop the questions aimed at their experiences and meaning-
making processes, particularly as women of color. Table 1 lists the inhibitors and facilitators at
each level. These factors, drawn from the literature, are represented in the conceptual framework.
Inhibitors Facilitators
Microsystem (personal
relationships – friends, family,
peers)
Feeling of separateness Non-traditional Mentorship
Mesosystem
(unit/organization)
Inequitable hiring practices
Microaggressions
Traditional mentorship –
relationship with supervisor
Non-traditional mentorship
– relationships with
colleagues
Exosystem (institutions) Lack of commitment to
diversity
Institutional commitment to
diversity
Recruitment

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Institutional culture -
alienating
Lack of advancement
opportunities
Orientation
More representation of
women of color in
leadership
Macrosystem (cultural values
and norms)
Stereotypes of women of
color  cannot serve in
leadership positions
Images of women of color
in leadership positions –
women of color being seen
as effective leaders

Table 1. Inhibitors and facilitators experienced at each system.

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Figure 1. Sense-making of women of color administrators in mid-level management positions in the
context of intersectionality and systems.

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To combine the factors informed by the literature with Bronfenbrenner’s ecological
model, this section will address each system separately and make connections to this specific
study. Each level also identifies the possible inhibiting and facilitating factors, and each section
specifies how I examined these concepts in my own study.
Microsystem. The microsystem is the area that consists of the most immediate
relationships such as family, friends and colleagues (Perron, 2017). In Figure 1, it is represented
in the center as it is situated inside the other, broader systems. For this study, the microsystem
that was examined are the relationships of women of color, such as family relationships,
friendships outside the context of their employment, and relationships with colleagues in the
professional space. These relationships with colleagues are more lateral in structure and can
serve as non-traditional mentorship. Previous literature showed that women of color
administrators and faculty gravitated towards non-traditional forms of mentorship that were more
lateral in structure and where mentors and mentees were viewed more as colleagues who shared
knowledge (Chang et al., 2014; Tran, 2014). I also examined relationships that are developed
with other colleagues in higher education but through professional organizations such as the
AAWS professional development program sponsored by NASPA. Through these programs,
women of color are able to develop relationships with other women of color, to find resources
and knowledge in each other, and to develop strategies as a community (West, 2017). I aimed to
determine how these lateral relationships with friends, family, and peers serve as non-traditional
forms of mentorship and support, how they contribute to the participants’ understanding of their
identity as women of color and as leaders, and in what ways they contribute to their professional
and personal development. The literature states that an inhibitor at this level are feelings of

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separateness or perceptions of prejudice (Gardner et al., 2014). I focused mainly on non-
traditional mentorship and on inhibitors in the mesosystem, exosystem, and macrosystem.
Mesosystems. The mesosystem is considered the immediate surroundings of the
individual, and the interconnections of those settings (Perron, 2017). For the study, I identified
the mesosystem as the department or unit that the women of color occupy, along with the
extended offices that are connected to their unit and the division that houses their unit. Because
the participants were mainly mid-level managers at PWIs, their direct surroundings were
sometimes an office (i.e. office of cultural affairs) that also sits within a larger division or unit
(i.e. division of student affairs). As the research has shown, factors such as hiring processes can
greatly affect administrators of color and their ability to succeed within their organization
(Gardner et al., 2014). Within the mesosystem, I focused on practices that directly affect women
of color, such as hiring and promotion within their unit or division, representation of women of
color in staff and leadership roles within that division, and the culture of their particular unit.
I also examined relationships with supervisors as a form of traditional or hierarchical
mentorship and how that affects individuals’ professional journeys. Traditional mentorship is
more hierarchical in which one senior-level mentor is bestowing knowledge and advice onto a
mentee (Merriam et al., 1987). In the study, I examined how both types of mentorship (non-
traditional and traditional) shape the advancement of women of color into leadership positions. I
aimed to better understand how these mentoring relationships also influence and potentially
change their institutional surroundings, whether that is through impacting policies and
procedures or helping transform leadership or governing structures.
Exosystem. The exosystem is a system that does not have a direct relationship to the
individual, but may have an indirect effect on the individuals through policy changes and

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institutional procedures (Perron, 2017). For this study, the exosystem was the PWI and the
institution at large. The structural factors that were the focus are the institutional commitment to
diversity, institutional culture, and advancement opportunities. As the literature noted, the main
aspects of the institution that participants commented on acting as a facilitator or as a barrier
were the institution’s commitment to diversity, the institutional culture (which included
representation of women of color in leadership roles), and abundance or lack of advancement
opportunities. I aimed to determine how the presence or lack of the aforementioned factors
influence women of color’s continued success or if it contributes to their feelings of professional
stagnation. I examined the inhibitors and facilitators of the exosystem as listed in Table 1 and
represented in the conceptual framework. This includes policies and procedures implemented at
the institutional level, the institutional culture and how it influences the mesosystem which is the
office or unit of the women of color participants. PWIs act as the larger system in which their
organization is situated in. The institutional practices and procedures of PWIs inform the kinds
of experiences that women of color have within their own unit as well as in the larger university
setting. During the data collection phase, I focused on the participants’ perceptions of the
institution’s commitment to diversity, such as devoting financial resources for diversity-related
programming or faculty, staff and student recruitment. I also focused on the participants’ ability
to partake in professional development at their institution, as well as their viewpoints on hiring
and advancement opportunities at their institution.
I also examined how the lack of representation of women of color leaders at the
institution served as a structural barrier. The concept of lack of representation of women of color
leaders then overlaps from mesosystem into macrosystem. This is because the lack of women of
color leaders at the institution has been developed into a cultural norm in which women of color

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have not seen themselves as leaders because they do not see leaders that represent them (Tran,
2014). This also echoes the meaning-making process that is present through all systems
represented in the conceptual framework above, in that their experiences in the institution
continue to affect how women of color see themselves.
Macrosystem. The macrosystem is seen as the “influence of an overarching culture [that]
impacts the world of each individual” (Perron, 2017, pp. 200-201). As labeled in Figure 1, the
macrosystem consist of the values and beliefs that surround the institution and the units and
individuals within that institution. The macrosystem is represented as a large circle outlined with
dotted lines, as the other systems (microsystem, mesosystem, and exosystem) are more concrete
and tangible. They are seen in their direct relationships with family and friends (microsystem),
their direct surroundings (mesosystem), and the institution that they occupy (exosystem). In
contrast, the macrosystem represents cultural values and norms which are not as visible or
concrete, but still impact the way the other systems operate. This can include the viewpoints of
women leaders and leaders of color in higher education, and the perceptions of leadership that
are grounded in race and gender. I incorporated Crenshaw’s intersectionality theory to show that
both race and gender are critical when it comes to viewing senior leadership as a viable option
for women of colors. When women of color are able to serve in leadership positions, it has
multiple effects in the microsystem. It redefines what leadership looks like, as more women of
color in leadership positions means shifting the idea of leadership away from a representation of
mainly White men now to leadership encompassing more identities, such as people of color and
women. It also provides a sense of agency among underrepresented groups such as students of
color, women of color students, and women of color professionals. More women of color in
leadership positions at their institution (which is a facilitator within the exosystem) could help

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students of color and women of color professionals at PWIs feel more invested and connected to
the campus, reassuring them that their leaders align with their identities and will continue to
support them. At a macrosystem level, this in turn can shape the message that women of color
administrators in mid-level management are capable and are needed in senior leadership roles.
The message then helps inform the women of color’s view of themselves and their ability to
ascend to leadership positions.
As Hammond et al. (2017) highlighted in their studies, meaning-making plays a
significant role in the experiences of leaders and individuals. For women of color, they make
meaning out of their experiences within their direct circles of friends, family, and colleagues
(microsystem), within their direct unit and school (mesosystem), within the larger institution
(exosystem), and also within the larger cultural context (macrosystem). As will be further
discussed in the following chapter, I focused on how participants made meaning of their
experiences, and how women of color utilized their experiences to shape their personal and
professional growth. The hope was to move the narrative towards desire-based research versus
damage-centered research (Tuck, 2009). Rather than focusing on the barriers that are very much
present within the institution, the meaning-making process focuses on what women of color
aspire to be in spite of these challenges, and how they use facilitating strategies like mentorship
and networking as a way to address the structural and systemic inequities. As Hammond et al.
(2017) also described, they evaluate these experiences which then inform and shape a new
narrative for the women of color leaders. Given the different systems and the fact that there are
both facilitating and inhibiting factors at each level, the possibility of seeing oneself as a leader,
and thus aspiring to senior leadership roles, is dependent on a complex set of factors, and likely
affects individuals in different ways. It is important to note that the meaning-making process is

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being done through an intersectionality lens, as the women of color participants viewed their
experiences as both women and people of color, and cannot separate the two (Crenshaw, 1990).
Thus, recognizing intersectional identities, this study considered the varied ways that both
facilitating and inhibiting factors shaped shape women of color’s perceptions of and aspirations
for leadership.
The arrows in Figure 1 represent their movement in their professional journeys. On the
right-hand side of the Figure are the facilitators to personal and professional development, which
then could positively contribute to the participants’ advancement to leadership development. On
the left-hand side of Figure 1, the inhibitors at each system or level could contribute to the
participants’ stagnation or possible attrition from the field. In addition to studying the meaning-
making processes of women of color administrators, I also focused on how the inhibitors and
facilitators at each level either impeded or supported their professional pursuits. In the following
chapter, I will discuss the research design of the study and how these themes and concepts in my
conceptual framework guided the data collection and analysis processes.

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CHAPTER 3: RESEARCH METHODS
This chapter will outline the methods for the study, description of settings and
participants, and details on how data was collected and analyzed. I will also discuss the strategies
for maximizing credibility and trustworthiness, and how I worked to ensure ethical practice in
relation to my research participants. The chapter will end with limitations of the study as well as
my positionality in relation to this topic of women of color leaders in higher education.
Research Design
Because the research questions for the study are more about understanding the
experiences of women of color leaders in higher education and how institutional factors
influence their professional development and advancement, I utilized qualitative methods as
qualitative research focuses on “understanding how people interpret their experiences, how they
construct their worlds, and what meaning they attribute to their experiences” (Merriam &
Tisdell, 2016, p. 46). Specifically, I used narrative inquiry as it relies on “the use of stories as
data, and more specifically, first-person accounts of experience” (Merriam & Tisdell, 2016, p.
112). This study included semi-structured interviews with open-ended questions to allow
participants to share their stories. Participants also journaled their experiences at the PWIs and
were provided prompts for each journal entry for each month over a course of three to four
months. The interview data and journal reflections provided rich information on each
participant’s experiences as a woman of color at a PWI, focusing on how those experiences
across the multiple systems they navigated shaped their aspirations for senior leadership
positions.

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Sampling
Because the study focused on women of color mid-level managers (MLMs) at PWIs, I
used criterion-based sampling, in which I decided upon the criteria first before selecting
participants (Merriam & Tisdell, 2016). I conducted outreach to colleagues who work at PWIs.
Having worked in student affairs for about 10 years, I have been able to develop relationships
with colleagues at different institutions. I am currently involved in various professional
organizations such as NASPA which is a national organization for student affairs administrators
and faculty, and I am also involved with another non-profit organization titled Leadership
Education for Asian Pacifics, Inc. (LEAP, Inc.) which is an organization that focuses on the
advancement of Asian and Pacific Islander professionals in education and in businesses who are
interested in senior leadership positions. Within the larger organization of NASPA, I am also a
member of different affinity groups, such as Women in Student Affairs. I reached out to
members of my professional networks and members of these groups to recruit participants to the
study. For LEAP, Inc., and for the NASPA Women in Student Affairs group, I posted an
announcement in LinkedIn and Facebook. I used snowball sampling in order to recruit additional
participants for the study. My colleagues and mentors as well as the participants who agreed to
be involved with the study also assisted with recruiting other women of color who were in mid-
level management positions at either the same PWI or other PWIs across the country at the time
of the study.
The recruitment flyer contained a link that redirected them to an online questionnaire that
served as the online screener, and both the flyer and online screener are included in the
appendices. The screener included demographic questions such as race, gender, and work
location. It also asked questions related to their role such as position/title, description of their

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role, description of their unit and institution, and number of years that they have been working in
higher education administration. It then asked for contact information and if they would be
willing to be contacted for interviews and monthly journaling for the purposes of data collection
for the study. From the responses, I was able to reach out to 14 respondents who agreed to
participant in interviews and journaling. The criteria in selecting participants will be further
detailed in the participants section below.
Description of Settings
For the purpose of the study, PWIs were defined as institutions in which 50% or more of
the student population identify as White or Caucasian (Brown & Dancy, n.d.). Although there is
no specified directory of PWIs, I recruited participants who self-identified as working at a PWI
through the online screener just mentioned. The definition of PWIs was included in the screener,
so that participants would be able to self-identify accordingly. The participants were able to self-
identify having worked at a predominantly White or historically White institution, based on their
experiences working at the institution. These ranged from community colleges to four-year
public and private institutions, which are listed in the table below.
Participants
The participants that I recruited for my study self-identified as a woman as well as a
person of color. The definition of “woman” and “person of color” were open to interpretation by
the participants. On the online screener as well as in the email invitation (both in appendices),
the terms “womxn/womyn” were utilized in an attempt to be more inclusive of various gender
expressions (Karpinski, 2020). However, the discussion on “womxn” has continued to evolve,
with some arguing that “womxn” can still be exclusionary to trans women (Barradas, 2021). As a
result, I have chosen to use the terms “woman” and “women” in the study. In addition, their race

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and ethnicity listed in Table 2 below are terms that were used by the participants to identify their
racial/ethnic background.
Participants also served in an administrative position in mid-level management or higher.
This includes but is not limited to positions such as associate director, director and manager. For
this study, participants included: those who had worked or were, at the time of this study,
working in mid-level management positions and had been working in higher education for at
least five years in a professional role post-master’s degree, reported to the senior student affairs
officer or c-level position (chief operations officer, for example), and supervised at least one full-
time professional (Huelskamp, 2018). I focused on units that are student-facing, such as student
services or student affairs units. There is no explicit description of mid-level management roles
as defined by a larger professional organization such as NASPA, and this may be due to the
changing landscape of higher education. However, these criteria were used as guidelines to
determining participants who have served a substantial amount of time in the profession of
higher education administration. In addition, these criteria also highlight administrators who
have served in a leadership capacity, but have not achieved senior leadership at their institution,
such as vice chancellor or president. The criteria also served as a way to narrow down the pool of
participants to a select group of 14 participants. I was able to achieve diversity among
participants in terms of position, years in the profession, type of institution (i.e., private PWI
versus public PWI). In terms of how they identified with regards to their racial and ethnic
background, I was also able to have a fairly diverse group, but was open to the possibility of
having one or more ethnic or racial groups more represented than others.
After receiving approval from the University of Southern California Institutional Review
Board (IRB), I sent a call-out to my networks through way of a virtual announcement on social

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media boards, such as Facebook community groups or LinkedIn groups. The announcement
contained a link that asked individuals to complete an online screener which gathered
information about participants as well as provided an opportunity for participants to demonstrate
interest in being interviewed and also to participate in journaling. From the screener results, I
reached out to 15 participants. Out of the 15 who met the criteria, 14 participants agreed to
complete interviews and engage in journaling. Because data collection was conducted virtually
over Zoom online sessions, I did not restrict my search for participants based on geographic
locations. I was open to recruiting participants from across the US and conducted interviews
online during times that were conducive to our respective time zones.
Pseudonym Race/Ethnicity Position/Role Type of
institution
Location Years of
experience
Lina Chinese
American
Operations and
Finance Manager
for Residence
Life
Mid-size
Four-year,
Private
Midwest 10 years
Christine Filipina Director of
Student Success
and Engagement
Large Four-
year, Private
West,
southwest
10 years
Sonya Latina,
Mexican
Student Support
Manager
Large
Community
College
West,
southwest
8 years
Frida Chicana,
Latina,
Mexican
American
Student Basic
Needs Manager
Large Four-
year, Private
West,
southwest
16 years
Dolores Mexican
American
Director of
Master’s Student
Affairs
Large Private
Research
West,
southwest
20+ years
Savi Black
American
Academic and
Career
Coordinator
Large public
research one
Pacific
Northwest
8 years
Carmela Latina,
Chicana
Senior Manager
for Student
Success
Large
research one
land-grant
institution
West 6 years

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Gloria Mexican
American
Counseling and
Assessment
Supervisor
Community
college
West 5 years
Mimi Multiracial,
Korean and
White
Associate
Director of First-
Generation
scholarships
Large public
university
West 15 years
Faith African
American
Associate
Director of
University
Housing
Small public
institution
East 25 years
Joyce Black Program Director
of TRIO
programs
Mid-size
Public
East 20 years
Irene Latina Director of
Student Support
Community
college
West,
southwest
5 years
Kim Filipina Associate
Director of
Diversity, Equity,
and Inclusion
Private
research one
institution
Midwest 9 years
Toughie Puerto Rican Chief Diversity
and Inclusion
Officer
Small public
institution
Midwest 9 years
Table 2. List of women of color mid-level manager participants
Below I shared more information about the participants as well as their aspirations to help
contextualize where each participant stood in relation to each other, particularly in the area of
leadership aspirations.
Lina has worked in student affairs for about 10 years and is currently the operations and
finance manager for residence life at an institution in the Midwest. She was drawn to this
position as it combined her experience in marketing as well as her passion for student affairs.
She saw herself staying in this position for a long period of time as the position allowed her to
prioritize her family first, as she is able to leave work at the end of the day. She shared that
currently she did not have any plans to change positions or apply to more senior-level positions
down the line.

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Christine has also been in student affairs for about 10 years and has recently become the
director of student success and engagement at her current school located in the southwest. She
also had experience working at IHEs on the east coast as well, which also formed her
understanding of leadership in higher education. She mentioned that she hopes to be a faculty
member and senior level administrator one day, and she attributed those aspirations to her
mentors who also served as faculty members.
Sonya served as the student support manager at a large community college in the west
and has been in student affairs for about eight years. She stated that in about five years, she
hoped to be the dean of counseling, and in 10 years to be the vice president of student services.
She mentioned that she was very determined to obtain those positions as she believed it is
important to have a seat at the table where decisions are being made.
Frida worked at a large private institution on the west coast as the student basic needs
manager. She has been in the student affairs field for about 16 years and attributed much of her
professional growth to her undergraduate institution, also located in the west. She was not quite
sure whether she wanted to be in senior level positions such as vice president, but she
acknowledged that she must first obtain the experiences and skills before determining which
roles she could serve in to be the most helpful and impactful for her students.
Dolores has worked in the student affairs field for more than 20 years and was the
director of master’s student affairs at a large, private institution on the west coast. She hoped to
be able to teach undergraduate students one day. She also was very passionate about teaching
future professionals the importance of student affairs in higher education, as much of the
research had been done by White men. She believed that there was a gap between student affairs

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research and real-world applications, and hoped to one day be able to bridge that through her
teachings.
Savi served as an academic and career coordinator at a large, public research one
institution in the pacific northwest. She explained that she served in a director-type role but did
not have the director title. She shared that this was motivation for her to job-search and look for
similar director roles in academic advising at different institutions. She was also open to roles
focused on policy work, and had applied to positions within non-higher education organizations,
such as municipal organizations.
Carmela was the senior manager for student success for a large, public institution in the
west. She was currently in a doctoral program, so within five years she saw herself having
finished her doctoral program. She was not quite sure where she saw herself in terms of role but
she would like to continue helping historically underrepresented students and perhaps serve in a
role such that allowed her to teach and be an administrator, such as professor of practice.
Gloria served as the counseling and assessment supervisor at a community college in the
west. She saw herself in a dean position in the next five years, but was not restricted to any
institution. She shared that her end goal is to serve in a senior leadership role on an executive
team and to implement strong change, perhaps at a broader level such as at the community
college district level. She stated that her mentors and the people she looked up to at previous and
current institutions were what shaped her aspirations.
Mimi was the associate director of first-generation scholarships at a large public
university in the west. In five to 10 years, she saw herself possibly outside of higher education,
doing policy work at the state level. But she also acknowledged that it may require experience
and skillsets in those areas to obtain those positions. Realistically she stated that she could see

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herself at the director level at the institution, and that she is mostly interested in “big picture”
roles where she can help make an impact for more students.
Faith was the associate director of university housing at a small public institution in the
east. In 10 years, she saw herself retired as she has worked 25 years in the student affairs field.
She also considered going back to school within the next five years, such as going to business
school so that she can start a side business or helping develop a bridge program to help students
prepare for college. She shared that she would like to serve in a director role where she can help
fellow staff and new students grow.
Joyce was the program director of TRIO programs at a mid-size public institution in the
east. In five years, she did not see herself at the current institution and also saw herself as a
director over multiple programs or being the assistant or associate vice president of academic
success and strategies. In 10 years, she saw herself being the vice president of a college or
university. Before she retires, she would like to be the president of a smaller university. This
would allow her to learn more about students on an individual basis, while also changing policies
and helping shape the community atmosphere.
Irene served as the director of student support at a community college in the
west/southwest area. In about five years, she saw herself as the vice president of student services,
and within 10 years, she saw herself as the president of a community college. Her goal is to lift
others up and to build up fellow colleagues (such as faculty and classified staff), particularly
because when she applies for an open dean position, she wanted to make sure that she can pass
down her department to capable hands. Her goal was to have strong structures to allow for
strategic partnerships to happen.

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Kim served as the associate director of diversity, equity, and inclusion at a private,
research one institution in the Midwest. She had served in the role for two weeks at the time of
this study but had been at the institution for seven years. Her professional goals were not tied to a
title. Rather, her goals were more personal and aimed for financial liberation within the next five
to 10 years, as she saw finances as a way to support others in need. Her ultimate goal would be to
have a career or position that could impact broader change.
Toughie was the chief diversity and inclusion officer of a small public institution in the
Midwest. Originally, she wanted to become a president of a university and possibly a tenured
faculty member. But due to her medical diagnoses, she no longer aspired to be president,
particularly because it is accompanied with high levels of stress and she acknowledged she
needed to prioritize her physical well-being. She was open to looking into roles in different areas
such as public administration and community development.
Data Collection
In order to fully understand the experiences of higher education women of color
practitioners, I used narrative inquiry as a research method. Once the 14 participants were
selected from the screener, I reached out to the participants to schedule online interviews. I also
devoted time during the interview (at the beginning and at the end) to discuss the journaling
activity, which will be detailed below.
Interviews
The selected methodology, narrative inquiry, highlighted the participants’ stories as
narrative inquiry “privileges the storyteller…[with] the subject of our research is not the object
of observation, but is the narrator, the storyteller ” (Kramp, 2004, p. 111). For this purpose, I
used semi-structured interviews with open-ended guiding questions that allowed for more

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freedom for the interview participant to determine what would be discussed in the interview. I
conducted one interview per participant, ranging from 60 to 90 minutes in length, for a total of
about 16 hours of interview data. All interviews were completed online via Zoom conferencing.
A majority of the questions were about their experiences, behavior, opinions and beliefs
(Merriam & Tisdell, 2016) as the study was focused on the experiences of the participants as
well as their perceptions of the structural factors that facilitate or impede their professional
growth. As noted in the previous chapter, the interview questions and journal prompts were
developed with the intent to move away from damage-centered research and more towards
desire-based research (Tuck, 2009). This entailed questions that centered on their hopes and
desires of what IHEs can become as well as ways they exercise their agency. The questions were
open-ended intentionally, and I followed up with clarifying questions as needed. The interview
protocol in Appendix E included the questions that were asked and that were based on the
themes found in the literature as well as my conceptual framework. I recorded the interviews on
Zoom and notified participants that the interviews would be recorded but that pseudonyms would
be used in place of their names as well as locations and other identifiable information that were
brought up during the interviews in order to ensure confidentiality.
Journals
Journaling was a critical part of the narrative inquiry process, and as such, this was one of
the primary sources of data for my study. In addition, reflective journaling is an effective way for
participants to track reflections of past and present moments, and can then help with sense-
making of these experiences (Steven & Cooper, 2009 as cited in Kim, 2013). I asked participants
to engage in monthly journal prompts over a period of three to four months for a total of four
journal entries per participant. This was done through electronic journals such as Google

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documents and Microsoft word documents. I also recommended different forms of journaling to
facilitate this process. One participant opted to voice-record her journal entries and send them as
voice memos. The prompts were shared on a monthly basis, and are detailed in Appendix F. The
prompts asked the participants to reflect on a recent occurrence, and was meant to capture their
experiences post-interview. The time period of three to four months also provided insight as to
how the participants’ viewpoints changed regarding leadership over the course of that time, and
to see if any experiences caused a shift in thinking with regards to leadership aspirations.
Participants were asked to devote at least 30 minutes to one hour to journaling every
month. The journal entries ranged from one to two pages each. Out of the 14 participants, only
six participants completed all four journal entries over the course of the four-month period. For
the first month, 10 participants completed the first journal entry, eight participants completed the
second journal entry, seven completed the third journal entry, and six participants completed all
four journal entries. I followed up with each participant and sent reminders on a biweekly basis.
Possible factors that could have contributed to the challenges of completing the journal entries
could be due to work priorities as well as conflicting time engagements. I entered the data
collection phase understanding that there could be obstacles with obtaining journal entries from
all 14 participants. However, the entries that I did receive from the participants were still very
enlightening and rich with data, and were coded alongside the interview data to help me develop
the findings in this study. The data analysis will be further discussed in the next section. I would
recommend a longitudinal study to be conducted, which will be further detailed in Chapter Five.
Data Analysis
As the initial stage of data analysis, the transcripts from the recorded Zoom interviews
were reviewed, cleaned up, and coded using NVivo, a computer program that supports

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qualitative data analysis. The journal entries were also uploaded and coded using NVivo. I then
utilized emergent coding in which the codes came from the data (Merriam & Tisdell, 2016). I
also used a priori coding in which the conceptual framework and themes from the literature
helped me develop and organize codes in addition to the codes that emerged from the participant
responses. As is the case with qualitative research, I utilized an inductive approach in which I
reviewed the themes that came from the interviews and journal entries of the participants. The
table below is a representation of the possible themes and categories that were used during data
analysis and that helped to guide the codes that emerged from the data:
Themes from the literature Systems where these themes are present
Identity development – as a woman of color and
leader
Non-traditional Mentoring

Microsystem (relationships with peers,
colleagues, family, friends)
Institutional Factors (hiring practices,
microaggressions)
Traditional Mentoring
Mesosystem (relationships within their unit
and organization)
Institutional Factors (institutional commitment to
diversity, institutional culture, representation of
women of color leaders)
Exosystem (indirect relationships with
larger university and institutional setting)
Messages Women of Color received in terms of
leadership
Mentoring as a way to transform institutions
Macrosystem (connections to larger
systemic and cultural values)

Table 3. Themes from literature and systems where these themes are present.

Initially, I sought out to see how meaning was made through participants’ experiences among
peers, colleagues, and family members (microsystem), within their unit and school
(mesosystem), within the larger university and institutional setting (exosystem), and how that
connects back to the cultural values and norms regarding leadership (macrosystem). The codes
that emerged then fell into four groups that were used as the four major themes of my findings:
mentorship, shared leadership, connection to a larger purpose, and the impact of family and well-

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being on leadership aspirations. The codes are grouped under these four themes and can be found
in the code book in Appendix F.
To allow for a deeper analysis, I utilized the analytic tools such as questioning and
comparisons (Corbin & Strauss, 2008). As a researcher, I cannot rely solely on the surface value
of the responses being given. By asking “what if…” and “so what?” questions, I was able to
examine more complexities that lay within the participants’ responses (Corbin & Strauss, 2008).
The constant comparison analytic tool (Corbin & Strauss, 2008) also pushed me to make
connections among codes which then led to the development of the major themes. For instance,
the theme of shared leadership appeared in multiple instances of different participants’
experiences of PWIs, particularly as they described the lack of collaboration or transparency at
PWIs. By comparing the codes, I was able to discover that the overarching theme was shared
leadership. I also utilized the waving the red flag method (Corbin & Strauss, 2008), in which I
asked critical questions about the data, particularly what is truly going on in that instance? For
instance, one of the participants, Frida, had mentioned her supervisor being supportive and
transparent with regards to her salary. Although at face value, it appeared that she was sharing a
positive interaction with her supervisor. After reflecting and taking a step back, I realized that
perhaps this retelling was framed in such a way because of the meaningful relationship the
participant had with her supervisor. I had to assume the role of analyst and question, “what if the
supervisor had advocated for additional funding in addition to being transparent?” Although it
was a bit difficult and challenging for me to ask those questions, it is critical to get a fuller and
truer understanding of the dynamics at play, particularly because I was studying the
environmental factors, as detailed in my conceptual framework. I also documented my
reflections during the data collection and data analysis phases through reflexive memos in

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Appendix H. The reflexive memos allowed me to notice themes that were coming up during the
data collection and data analysis stages. In addition, I was able to question some observations
that occurred during and after the interviews with the participants. Through reflexive memos, I
am able to dig deeper into the analysis as a researcher by recording the questions and reflections
that emerge during data collection.
Positionality, Credibility and Trustworthiness
In my role as a researcher, I acknowledge my identities as a Filipina-American woman
and as a woman of color and how that is situated within this study that focuses on women of
color leaders in higher education. In addition, I have had more than 10 years of experience in the
field of student affairs and higher education administration, and a majority of my professional
career has been spent at a PWI. When interacting with the participants, this allowed for a greater
ease in conversation as we both had a mutual understanding about PWIs as well as experiences
of women of color at these institutions. Initially, I was concerned that this would also pose as a
challenge, as this may contribute to researcher bias (Maxwell, 2013), and that they may not share
pieces of information that they may assume I already have knowledge about, such as
characteristics of PWIs. But our shared identities of being women of color while also working as
MLMs at PWIs actually allowed for naturally transparent conversations, in which the
participants felt comfortable sharing their experiences. This may be due to the lack of effort
required to contextualize their experiences in higher education.
As the interviews utilized open-ended questions, I relied on emergent coding. Before data
collection started, I was concerned that my identity as a woman of color may lead to biases when
asking questions or analyzing the data. My goal was to ensure that participants’ authentic
responses were being communicated as well as appropriately represented. In order to address

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this, I utilized analytic tools as previously mentioned. I also engaged in self-reflection through
journaling before, during and after the data collection phase, which are included in the reflexive
memos in Appendix H. This also provided another way to ensure reliability as it allowed me to
utilize the reflexive memos as an audit trail (Merriam & Tisdell, 2016). Through reflexive
memos and journals, I was able to create an audit trail on my process of collecting and analyzing
data, including the asking of critical questions regarding the data and the development of the
themes from my findings (Merriam & Tisdell, 2016). I also conducted member checks in which I
sent summary of the findings and the themes from the study to the participants. The participants
were asked to respond with any questions or comments, as this was to ensure that the analysis
and interpretation of their responses were accurate (Merriam & Tisdell, 2016). Although they did
not have any questions, they did share their comments and reactions to the themes from the
findings. They found the themes such as leadership at all levels to be affirming. I also solicited
feedback through the form of peer review (Merriam & Tisdell, 2016), and I reviewed the data
with my faculty chair and we discussed the findings together during our biweekly meetings. This
served as a way to ensure credibility as we were able to check the assertions being made.
Ethics
The participants were selected mainly through snowball sampling and through personal
and professional networks. As a result, relational ethics were an important consideration as the
participants have a direct or indirect relationship to me as the researcher (Glesne, 2011). This
was beneficial as the types of relationship that I have with select participants were based in
mutual respect and trust and could allow for more ease in creating rapport between the researcher
and participant. There were some concerns initially that the lines of researcher and friend or
colleague may be blurred, and participants may divulge information to me in my role as a friend

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versus my role as a researcher. To address this, I conducted member checks and asked
participants to review the summary of findings and to ensure that the information shared was in
their role as a study participant. I also made sure to address this at the onset of the study. I
acknowledged my dual roles as a colleague and as a researcher, and that for this study, during the
interviews and the journaling process, the information they disclosed would be used for the
study. I emphasized at the beginning of each interview that I would be using pseudonyms to
protect their identities.
Another consideration in terms of ethics is that some personal experiences related to race
and gender may be a very sensitive topic for the participants, and could be retraumatizing for
them. In the role as researcher, I was very respectful and thoughtful of how to address the
emotions that were being brought out in that moment (Glesne, 2011). I also started each
interview by stating that they did not need to answer all questions and if specific questions
brought up memories or thoughts that they did not want to revisit, they had the option not to
answer the questions. This also applied to the journal entries, and they were given the option to
not respond to specific journal prompts if they were not comfortable in doing so.
Limitations
At the onset of the study, I was concerned that one limitation would be the inability to
achieve triangulation, in which I am able to gather data from multiple sources to help strengthen
the study’s validity and credibility (Merriam & Tisdell, 2016). Due to COVID-19, I was unable
to observe participants at their university settings. Observations could have been helpful in
achieving triangulation as it would provide another source of data that could foreground the
responses I received from the participants. Because I was also examining institutional factors,
observations could have provided information as to how each participant’s institution was

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structured and what barriers, if any, impeded their professional growth. As a result, the primary
source of data were the interviews and the journals of the participants, both being self-reported
data collection mechanisms.
Another limitation of the study was that only six out of the 14 participants completed all
four journal entries. As mentioned earlier, the journal entries did provide more insight to their
daily experiences and also how their viewpoints on leadership may have changed over a course
of a four-month period. The dwindling participation may have been due to work and personal
circumstances. The COVID-19 pandemic may have also acted as a factor, as professional and
personal circumstances may have changed due to the pandemic and thus impacted their ability to
continue with journaling. In addition, the journaling activity required continued engagement on
behalf of both the researcher and participant. Although I was not able to obtain 100%
participation with regards to journals, the entries that I did receive provided rich data that
contributed greatly to the study.
Due to the time constraints of the study, I mainly focused on the participants’
mesosystems (relationship with their unit and organization), and exosystems (indirect
relationships with the larger institution), although themes from the microsystems (relationships
with peers, colleagues, family, friends) and macrosystem (messages they receive about women
of color leaders) were touched upon. The participants discussed the importance of family, which
will be discussed as one of the themes from the findings. But as I will share in the
recommendations for future research, I believe that additional research could be devoted to how
families and their upbringing can influence or impact the leadership aspirations of women of
color MLMs.

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Conclusion
The purpose of the study was to better understand the experiences of women of color
mid-level managers at PWIs. Particularly, I aimed to study the impact of the environment
(mesosystem, exosystem) on women of color MLMs and their professional aspirations. I utilized
narrative inquiry as a method of qualitative research to highlight the lived experiences of women
of color as they encountered inhibitors and facilitators at PWIs and made meaning of these
experiences. I conducted semi-structured interviews and collected reflective journals as data
collection strategies, and used a combination of emergent coding and a priori coding drawn from
the literature and the conceptual framework. In order to address the limitations and concerns
related to credibility, I engaged in self-reflection as well as member checks of the data and the
themes that emerged from the data analysis.

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CHAPTER 4: FINDINGS
Through the analysis of the interviews and the journals, the experiences of women of
color mid-level managers informed and shaped their leadership aspirations in four main ways
that spanned across the four different levels of microsystem, mesosystem, exosystem, and
macrosystem. The findings from the study centered around four themes: 1) mentorship as a way
to advance and to create change, 2) shared leadership as being a model to counter the
hierarchical PWI culture, 3) women of color connecting to a larger purpose as part of their
leadership aspirations, and 4) the impact of family and prioritizing well-being over leadership
aspirations.
In the first section, I will discuss how mentorship helped in the participants’ journey to
higher leadership positions. As also discussed in the literature, mentorship acted as a facilitator
(mesosystem, exosystem) as participants’ professional and peer mentors helped women of color
mid-level managers see potential within themselves to continue advancing to higher roles and to
also help others who will soon follow them. I will then discuss how mentorship served as a
mechanism to create change where they were. Mentorship served as a way to form community in
spaces that were often unwelcoming to women of color (mesosystem, exosystem). It also served
as a way to act as forms of resistance to leadership structures within their institutions
(mesosystem, exosystem) in hopes of influencing change at a broader level (macrosystem).
Mentorship for the Journey Forward
Women of color mid-level managers in this study saw mentorship as a way to help form
their leadership aspirations, as mentors
2
were critical figures who helped them see themselves as
leaders and were pointed to positions in higher education to which they should aspire. As a result

2
For the study, I sometimes relied on the participants’ own definition and meaning-making of mentors and mentorship.

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of the findings from the study, I drew on multiple definitions of mentorship. As mentioned
previously, traditional mentoring was defined as a hierarchical, top-down structure in which a
mentor who has positional power over the mentee supports the mentee(s) in achieving their
professional and personal goals in the following ways: faculty member supporting graduate
students, senior faculty supporting new faculty members, and administrative supervisors
supporting their staff (Merriam et al., 1987). Moreover, mentorship was defined as
Contribut[ing] to the successful development of individuals and that mentors “support
and facilitate the realization of the Dream”— “the Dream” being the vision a young
person has about the kind of life [the person] wants to have as an adult (et al. 1978, 98).
Mentoring can integrate the important qualities of a parent-child relationship and a peer-
support relationship without being either (Levinson et al., 1978 as cited in Merriam et al.,
1987, p. 199).
Based on the definition provided, mentorship can be seen as a way to help develop an individual
professionally and personally, with the aim of helping that person achieve their goals, whatever
they may be. It was noted that mentorship takes qualities from a parent-child (top-down)
relationship as well as peer support relationships. Whereas the traditional model focuses more on
the top-down dissemination of knowledge from mentor to mentee (Girves et al., 2005 as cited in
Tran, 2014; Holmes et al., 2007 as cited in Tran, 2014), nontraditional mentoring relationships
are more lateral where resources are shared among colleagues in a more horizontal structure. As
was seen in the literature, these models were seen through “mentorship partners” or peer mentors
(Kochan, 2013 as cited in Tran, 2014; Sorcinelli & Yun, 2007, as cited in Tran, 2014). This
shows that mentorship can come in different forms, either top-down from a supervisor or formal
mentor who is in a more senior role, or through peer mentorship from colleagues who serve in

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similar roles as one’s self. Both informed the concept of mentorship for the participants. They
were either shoulder-tapped or nudged towards leadership opportunities by formal mentors such
as former or current supervisors. They also found mentoring relationships among colleagues and
peers, as will be discussed later in this section.
For the four participants who viewed higher positions in their professional futures, they
attributed their career goals to meaningful experiences with mentors who built them up and saw
them to be strong leaders in the field of higher education. They were nudged towards specific
opportunities for advancement. They also felt seen by their mentors through the act of being
“shoulder-tapped” for opportunities, which then propelled them to aspire for senior leadership
roles. Mentorship became a way to not only shape aspirations, but to develop themselves as well
as others who would be following in their footsteps.
“Shoulder-tapped” For Leadership: Mentors Seeing Potential in Women of Color
Five participants shared that in their professional careers, they were advised by previous
supervisors or mentors to apply to leadership positions. The participants described them as
“mentors” because of the professional and/or personal support that they received. The guidance
and influence they received from former or current mentors was the motivating force behind
them pursuing new opportunities. Kim stated:
So, a former work colleague who was an associate dean, she like shoulder tapped me into
opportunities and said, “Kim, I really think you can do this.” And I was like, “oh, you
really see me in this type of role?” and she said “yes absolutely!” like almost like in
shock that I didn't ever see myself doing that. So, one of the ways I got, one of the ways I
pursued the assistant director role was because she personally mentioned to me if I was
applying…it was because of her like mentorship and like guidance and like, like I said, I

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think, believing in me and seeing me as like a strong professional, I guess, or young
professional that really, that really helped me get the experiences that I've had.
When speaking about mentorship, Kim talked about being “shoulder-tapped” for a particular
opportunity and saw that as a mentorship act. While the interview did not explore the depth of
Kim’s relationship with this person, Kim self-reported her as a mentor, particularly because of
the professional support that the mentor provided. Connecting it back to the definition of
mentorship mentioned earlier, Kim’s mentor wanted the best for her, and this came through in
the form of a nudge to the next step in her professional career. What was noteworthy was that
Kim was shocked when her mentor suggested she apply for the role. This showed that she did
not see herself in the same way that her mentor did, at least not initially, and that her mentor saw
her as a strong candidate for the role. It was through her mentor believing her to be capable of
being successful in a new role that empowered Kim to pursue the position. Through being
shoulder-tapped, Kim received the message that she is capable of much more, and mentorship
served as a way for her to see herself to be a strong professional and to be a leader in a new way.
Women of color have often reported that being seen by influential mentors have been
instrumental to their feeling of confidence and thus helped with their decisions to pursue
additional professional opportunities (Pace, 2018).
In addition to mentorship being a way to signal to others that they were ready for the next
step, mentorship also became a way for women of color to see themselves in a more hopeful and
truer light. The four participants who shared that their aspirations included becoming a vice
president or president stated that it stemmed from a mentor or leader who saw potential in them
as a new or mid-level professional. Gloria who had strong aspirations for senior leadership
mentioned that her mentor, the dean of counseling, was one of the people who pushed her to

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pursue multiple opportunities and made her who she was. Both the dean of counseling and
president of her current institution identified as women of color, which made her feel empowered
to pursue such leadership positions. She shared:
I would say for both of the people that I look up to, or both the people who saw the
ability in me to do things that I didn't really think were true. So, the first time my current
dean gave me an evaluation, I cried, and I told her I was like, “I’m sorry. Like, I didn’t
mean to, like, I’m not a very emotional person. I was like, but for you to validate my
existence, right, that what I'm doing is good work and that you see additional skills in me
that you'd like to build upon is really encouraging.” And something that I, you know, I
don’t want to let her down and but it's also still in line with things I’m very passionate
about. So, it’s like a really interesting combination to see somebody who is your boss
who’s also trying to mentor you and also trying to get you to that next step, whether that
is with her or not with her. Because, you know, sometimes people don’t want to let
people go and she’ll tell me all the time. “If you need to leave, I’m going to be very sad,
but you need to do what you need to do if there’s no more opportunities here, then you
need to go where you need to go.”
Gloria saw her boss as her mentor as she was someone whom she looked up to. She also valued
her boss that she identified as a mentor because she saw something in her that she did not see
within herself or believed to be true. Being seen and validated by mentors was not only
something that confirmed that her current work was appreciated, but it also served as the
motivating force to keep going and strive for more. Gloria mentioned that she felt encouraged
and that she did not want to let her mentor down. She also acknowledged her unique position of
having done well in her current position while understanding that her mentor who was also her

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supervisor wanted her to excel and move on to the next step, even if that required leaving their
department. As Okawa (2002) stated in their study, mentorship was viewed by the mentees as a
“gift given, an end in itself, while the mentors instead see it as a vehicle, a means to an end”
(Okawa, 2002, p. 527). This is also connected back to the definition of mentorship, where the
mentors are helping the mentees achieve their dreams (Merriam et al., 1987). The participants
viewed the mentorship they received as acts of selflessness in which the mentor poured into the
women of color mentees. The mentees then took this gift and turned it into fuel to keep
progressing and advancing in their professional journeys.
Mimi also shared a similar experience in which she mentioned that she was
simultaneously advised and mentored out of her previous position by her former supervisor who
stated:
“And it’s not that I don’t want to keep you, but I’d be doing you a disservice by keeping
you here like you need to move on.” And that was absolutely the nudge I needed and she,
right, she’d been building to that. But I think for her to articulate that like our mentoring
relationship was going to still exist, but that she had given me all she could as a
supervisor and grow me as much as she could. And she just didn’t have the ability to give
me the next step up and wanted that for me.
Her former supervisor acknowledged that her guidance had its limits and in order for her to
succeed, she needed to venture out and find more challenging roles that would build up her skill
set. Mentorship can come in the form of being tapped on the shoulder to pursue new
opportunities. Mentorship was about helping others achieve their professional goals (Merriam et
al., 1987) and in Kim’s and Mimi’s case, it came in the form of a much-needed nudge to venture
out into new territory that the mentee never saw for themselves. As the conceptual framework

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theorized, mentorship served as a facilitator towards advancement, as her supervisor and mentor
(mesosystem) had supported her in finding opportunities in other units which would ultimately
facilitate her professional growth.
Mentorship and Lifting as You Climb
The definition of mentorship presented by Merriam et al. (1987) focused more on the
professional and personal support provided by formal mentors as well as peer mentors. In this
section, the participants shared that it was also about bringing up new professionals who are
coming up from behind you. This then shifted the focus of the participants being the mentees, to
them being the mentors who are also providing support to new and upcoming professionals.
They saw themselves as part of a bigger whole, and that their success meant that they were now
responsible to help new professionals achieve their goals as well. This was very much in line
with what the literature discussed as mentorship being multidimensional, wide-reaching and
nonconventional in order to ultimately change the institution from within (Alarcón & Bettez,
2017; Tran, 2014). Just as mentors helped guide and supported them throughout their
professional journeys, seven participants also saw it as a call to mentor those who will be
following in their own footsteps. Irene aspired to become a vice president of student services in
five years, and in 10 years plus, to become a college president. In the interim, she saw her role as
a mid-level manager to build up others and to strengthen her department as preparation for that
time when she will advance to senior leadership roles. This was a practice that she has enacted
previously and planned to continue as she progressed in her leadership journey. She stated:
These are all the things, right, like I'm moving forward. Meanwhile, I’m reaching back
and bringing somebody else and that’s exactly what I did at my former institution like I
was able to offer two, in the final interviews, the people who were there were two…

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actually who got my position was a former graduate of the institution who like followed
in my footsteps…and she became the new me as I left. And I’m like, great. You’re going
to do great, you know, and being able to dispel any kind of like imposter syndrome,
things like, you know, oh, “I’m not going to be able to do this,” like, you know what, I’m
like, “you don’t have to. This is your thing now, you can do whatever you want.”
Although Irene acknowledged that she had higher leadership aspirations, she understood that her
departure would mean an opening in her current department. She made sure that she pulled up
new professionals as she climbed towards higher leadership roles. In this scenario, Irene saw
herself in the mentor role and she was committed to help others professionally by reaching back
and bringing them up along with her as she moved forward. This benefitted their career growth
as well as ensured that the department would be in good hands. She also saw that imposter
syndrome (Clance & Imes, 1978, as cited in Dancy & Jean-Marie, 2014) was still present for
fellow women of color colleagues and that in her role as a mentor, she must also instill in her
successor the confidence that they do belong and to empower them to make this experience their
own. This idea of imposter syndrome is connected to what Kim and Gloria brought up about not
being able to see themselves as capable and strong leaders. By dispelling this myth, Irene helped
her mentees ward off imposter syndrome which could derail women of color from pursuing, or
even considering, leadership in higher education. Her actions as a mentor were driven by her
overarching goal of contributing to long-lasting change and improvements. This would help
ensure that the department would be in capable hands, and she wanted to play a role in that. She
also understood building someone up and preparing them for your current role can lead to a
strong legacy.

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Another participant, Savi, also spoke about the importance of pouring into mentees
because of the professional foundation she received from peer mentors. Savi’s friend who also
completed the student affairs master’s program alongside her served as an executive director of a
community organization focused on educator pathways. Her friend was integral to Savi’s
professional identity formation as she stated:
This person also plays a really large role of mentoring in my life and has really helped
my professional formation, particularly thinking about the fact that, you know, I was first
gen. I didn’t have anybody to sit down, like I didn't know what I didn’t know, and I
didn’t know what I didn't know to ask. And so, she really helped to do a lot of the
stewarding of that as I was figuring that out. And so now I'm able to, and I have mentees
of my own. So now I’m able to give that same advice back and that same kind of vote of
[confidence] and inspiration to my own mentees.
Savi was able to reflect upon her identity as a first-generation student and that the peer
mentorship she perceived to have received from her colleague was valuable, because it gave her
a vote of confidence. The guidance that she received from her friend was in line with the
previous definition of mentorship being a way to help individuals develop professionally as well
as achieve their goals (Merriam et al., 1987). Savi understood that this kind of support was
needed as she often did not have sources of support during her academic and professional
journey. Through this experience, she felt empowered to lift up other mentees in a similar
fashion, and instilled in them the same kind of confidence that she was given by her friend. To
Savi, leadership meant being able to guide others. Her relationship with her friend (microsystem)
then influenced her relationship with her mentees (microsystem, mesosystem) as she pushed her
mentees forward in a similar way that she herself had been pushed and supported.

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Mentorship had been a way of building up women of color professionals while also
ensuring that the work of women of color leaders in higher education was further sustained and
solidified. Mentors were able to see the potential in professionals such as Kim and Gloria, even
when (or especially when) they did not see it within themselves. This sense of empowerment
then led them to reject imposter syndrome, which is what women of color experience when they
may feel unworthy of their academic or professional accomplishments (Edwards, 2019).
Participants in this study felt encouraged to pursue new opportunities, and to see themselves as
leaders. In addition, the mentorship they received also led to a responsibility to ensure that the
road continued to be open for those who came after them. As seen with Irene and Savi, they
understood that they needed to provide that same support for their mentees who may be
experiencing imposter syndrome or did not know the ways to navigate higher education
institutions. Mentorship thus became a continual process of seeing beyond one’s self, pouring
into others and looking ahead. As Toni Morrison had stated,
When you get these jobs that you have been so brilliantly trained for, just remember that
your real job is that if you are free, you need to free somebody else. If you have some
power, then your job is to empower somebody else.
The participants did not see mentorship stopping at their own individual success. Rather, they
saw it as their responsibility to ensure that future professionals were granted similar
opportunities and the participants were able to facilitate their mentees’ growth through
mentorship.
Mentorship as a Way to Create Change Where They Are
Women of color mid-level managers also saw mentorship as a way to help lead where
they were currently positioned, primarily through peer mentorship and developing strong

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networks among colleagues. Traditionally, mentorship had been a strategy for staff of color,
particularly men, to advance professionally and to achieve higher leadership positions (Chang, et
al., 2014). However, many of the participants noted that they created and influenced change in
their current roles as mid-level managers through building networks across women of color
colleagues. As seen in the research literature, non-traditional mentorship models that were more
horizontal in structure were often avenues for women of color to impact change in their
organizations (Alarcón & Bettez, 2017; Chang et al., 2014; Tran, 2014). The experiences that
will be detailed in this section will be highlighting how community was created and how non-
traditional mentorship models were developed through peer mentoring and networks among
colleagues. Participants acknowledged the issues of inequity at their institutions and felt the need
to gather as a unified force. In their collective identity, they found the strength to challenge the
status quo and believed they were able to advocate for others through their support and
mentorship.
“Find Your People”: Mentorship as Community-Building
Faculty and staff of color have reported experiences of alienation and isolation at IHEs,
particularly at PWIs (Harper, 2012). As a way to combat this, the participants stated they felt the
need to find their community as a way to feel valued, included, and affirmed. As the literature
stated, mentorship served as a way for women of color to create lateral relationships with fellow
women of color colleagues and to provide support within PWIs and IHEs (Alarcón & Bettez,
2017; Chang et al., 2014; Tran, 2014). What was most notable in interviews with women of color
mid-level managers was their argument that in order to be successful at a PWI (exosystem),
women of color must find their community in a setting that was not originally designed for them.
Ten out of 14 participants mentioned that creating community and developing peer mentoring

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relationships among women of color was important to their professional development. Carmela
commented on the importance of community at these institutions when she stated:
I think PWIs, I mean, they just they weren’t, like we all know this, like they were not
created for the students right, like they were not created for like, they’re created for like
rich White men, as students and what that then means is that like staff and faculty will
reflect that. And while I think a lot of PWIs have obviously like diversified their staff and
faculty and their students and all those pieces, it’s like, it still can feel really lonely. So
even though it might take a little bit of time, like find your people, find the community,
because you are going to need folks that you can, like, lean on.
Carmela acknowledged that PWIs at their core were built for White men and that it was reflected
in the demographics of the students, and by extension, the staff and faculty. While these
institutions had made efforts to diversify, Carmela stated that it still felt lonely for women of
color such as herself, as she and fellow colleagues felt alienated in these environments. This
showed that PWIs have not progressed in terms of becoming welcoming environments for
women of color. As a way to counteract that, Carmela urged women of color who are at PWIs to
find their community through developing peer mentoring relationships, similar to what she had
developed with her colleague. When Carmela stated “find your people…because you are going
to need folks that you can…lean on,” she was calling for women of color to seek out mentorship
through their peers and colleagues. As Merriam et al. (1987), mentorship came in the form of
peer support in addition to past studies that have noted the importance of mentorship through
peer networks (Alarcón & Bettez, 2017; Chang et al., 2014; Tran, 2014). Although Carmela did
not explicitly state that peer networks benefitted women of color’s professional growth, the
connection can be made that in order for women of color staff members to survive and thrive at

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PWIs, peer relationships provided support systems for women of color to lean on while they
navigated unwelcoming spaces. Through creating strong networks with fellow women and
people of color, participants hoped to change the culture from within the institution through
collaborating and advocating for each other, which will be further discussed in this section.
Toughie also spoke about creating a community and an intergenerational network of
mentors as she spoke about an experience she had when coming to West City University to work
alongside faculty and fellow researchers. She was very grateful for the support she received
through an intergenerational network of mentors that consisted of college students, graduate
students, new professors as well as seasoned faculty. This type of arrangement was mutually
beneficial because everyone gained insight from each other, and the responsibility of guidance
was not placed on only one person. She stated:
I like Prof. S’s model so much of the intergenerational mentorship and when he said “we
ought to connect you to my community. And I promise, when you come, you’ll always
have food, transportation, and a place to stay,” he meant it. There was always this sea of
people that were willing to support. So, it was never just him. I think that was his way of
protecting himself too.
The intergenerational mentorship model that Toughie spoke about was a community of
individuals that ranged from college students all the way to tenured professors. She understood
that this model meant that those connected to one person were then connected to a larger network
of resources outside of professional guidance and career development. She saw that this was a
way to protect Prof. S as having a more expansive network prevented the burden of such a
responsibility like mentorship and guidance to be placed onto one person. When she stated “it
was never just him,” Toughie acknowledged that mentorship was not an individual endeavor,

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and that it truly did take a community to uplift each individual. As stated in the study conducted
by Alarcón & Bettez (2017), faculty of color were often over-burdened with responsibilities to
mentor others. In the example that Toughie shared, she showed how she and her colleagues
changed the concept of traditional mentorship and reimagined what mentorship could look like.
The burden was not placed on one person, as the responsibility was collectively shared. This
allowed for each person within the intergenerational mentoring network to succeed without over-
taxing one person.
Participants encouraged a call to action for women of color to take it upon themselves to
find these networks, rather than having the PWI address factors within its own institutional
culture that may continue to push women of color professionals to the margins. As shown
through the stories shared by the participants, mentorship was a way to be seen in organizations
that may sometimes overlook or alienate women of color, precisely because, as Carmela stated, it
was not originally made for them. Mentorship gave women of color a sense of comfort knowing
there are “people that were willing to support.” By being reaffirmed and supported by
colleagues, participants believed they would be able to persist and to lead from within their
organizations.
Mentorship as an Act of Resistance
In addition to supporting each other, five participants also saw peer mentorship as a way
to actively and intentionally address inequities at PWIs. For Mimi, the act of gathering and
finding colleagues and peer mentors was synonymous to organizing and fighting battles as a
unified group. Mimi mentioned that finding allies and colleagues in a PWI was critical for
feeling supported but also to bring about larger change. She shared that at the PWI where she

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was working at the time of the interview, there was a campus culture of harmony. She said there
was an unspoken pressure to
[keep up] the status quo. And so, I think there’s a lot of underground organizing. So, for
a woman of color at my institution, I’d say, like, find your community like, build that and
get your people. But I think more broadly, I would say…I guess I would say that to any
woman of color. I think that there’s a strong need to develop allies, whether that’s within
your institution or outside being part of maybe professional networks. It provides, you
know, ally-ship, mentorship, friendship, opportunities to grow, learn about other
institutions.
Similar to Carmela, Mimi recommended for women of color to find their community and “get
your people.” Her statement further supports that peer mentorship, ally-ship and friendships
helped with connecting to colleagues and supported overall professional growth. But these
connections were created in hopes to help shift the campus culture through a growing network of
like-minded colleagues, what she called “underground organizing.” This desire to change the
status quo also came up in one of Mimi’s journal entries. She wrote about a recent experience in
which she collaborated with different departments around a collective statement regarding
student experiences on campus. The statement was in response to multiple student concerns that
included interpersonal violence and racism occurring within student athletic programs, and that
she and her colleagues (mostly women and individuals of color) stood in solidarity with the
students. She shared:
[t]here were many positives of this experience, like, building community across units and
departments around a shared concern. Feeling valued and affirmed by others in regards to
my work. Solidarity. Hope that maybe change can happen. The difficult parts of the

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experience were the politics, recognizing just how scary White people view collective
response by a group holding and representing marginalized identities. It was also hard to
see how power is wielded to intimidate, control, and silence leaders or push them into
“playing along.”
Through collaborating with colleagues and peer mentors, she felt seen and affirmed by her
colleagues and she also felt hope that they can slowly make a change at their campus.
Connecting this back to her previous point about underground organizing, Mimi also recognized
that coming together as a group was viewed as challenging campus politics and power dynamics
of that institution. Peer mentorship and being in community allowed her to find a voice and not
stay complacent while in an environment that encouraged upholding the current culture of the
PWI. As shown in previous studies, mentorship has been utilized by women of color as a way to
promote social justice through the form of structural change of PWIs and IHEs (Alarcón &
Bettez, 2017; Tran, 2014). Mentorship can serve not only to support individual aspirations of
leadership, but aspirations for structural change too.
For Carmela, mentorship was a way to fight against structural inequities of PWIs through
challenging norms related to salary negotiation. The definition of mentorship provided by
Merriam et al. (1987) stated that mentors helped their mentees achieve their professional goals,
one of which can include goals related to salary negotiation. By sharing information through her
peer mentoring relationship with her colleague, Carmela was able to help a woman of color
colleague negotiate a higher salary, with her reasons being grounded in lifting each other up. She
said:
And I think that’s like, so I don't know, I guess, like I don't know where I necessarily like
picked that up, or if it's that I've just like been really fortunate. But yeah, it makes no

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sense. It makes no sense to me. Like, why wouldn’t you want to like uplift each other?
Right. Why wouldn’t you want to just say, like, “well, this is what I did or what I got.”
Just so… what, what you want to do with it is like totally your decision, if you don't want
to like try to negotiate or do those things like that’s totally fine. But like you should have
all the information. And like we just know that like across the board like women of color
in general are paid less and then like Latina women are paid even less than that. And so,
I’m just like, why wouldn’t we want to like advocate for each other?
She thought it did not make sense why women of color were not able to be more transparent
about their salaries. This spoke to a broader, systemic issue. The work culture of her PWI did not
encourage such transparency. To achieve one’s professional and personal goals, mentors have
shared their knowledge and experience with their mentees (Merriam et al., 1987). In the scenario
presented by Carmela, the structure at her institution did not allow for information-sharing to
occur, which is contradictory to professional growth as seen through mentorship. By not sharing
information with each other, it reinforced this culture that then allowed such pay disparities to
continue. In a report released by PayScale in 2020, it showed that organizations that were
transparent about the salaries of their employees were able to narrow the wage gap between men
and women (PayScale, n.d.). Carmela’s belief that the lack of transparency led to pay inequities
is further supported by research, and her desire to counteract that with open communication with
colleagues was a way to take active steps in closing the gap for women of color staff members
like herself. Through her peer mentoring relationship with her colleague, she saw the sharing of
knowledge as a way to empower women of color colleagues with another option or strategy
when facing inequities during the salary negotiation process. By sharing “what [she] did or what
[she] got,” Carmela expressed the need to be transparent with mentees in order to break the glass

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ceiling. When she said “it makes no sense to me,” Carmela was reacting to the secrecy in our
society about salaries and salary negotiation. In fact, this secrecy supported the status quo. She
alluded to this when she then connected it back to the larger disparities at the macrosystem level
related to the pay gap that women of color, particularly Latina women, encountered even outside
of IHEs. She asked the rhetorical question of “why wouldn’t we want to like advocate for each
other?” as a way to convey advocating for each other was necessary given the unequal and unjust
structures that women of color function within. Advocating for each other was not only
beneficial to her fellow colleague but was seen as a necessary step towards systemic change.
Similarly, Frida also saw salary negotiation to be critical for women of color
professionals in higher education, and saw mentorship as a way to facilitate this important task.
Her direct supervisor was a trusted colleague with whom she had developed a strong professional
and personal relationship. Her supervisor and the coordinator whose work she oversaw were both
women of color as well. When starting her position, she had discussed her salary with her
supervisor and stated:
But, you know, she was very upfront with like “this is the range of pay and I’m not going
to pay a woman of color less than the most that I can pay, so you can negotiate but I’m
going to offer you is like the highest it can be.” I went and then when I took the role, I
was like, I did negotiate and she was like, you can do that. But that means you know if I
can be $5000 more, then we have to take $5000 from your coordinator. My coordinator
now, and at the time was also a woman of color and oh, look, I’m not going to do that
because it was gonna make more of the difference at that pay than at my pay and so I felt
like that experience was something where it was like, we know what it’s like to have to
fight for, like, even a title. Like I’m not a director, I’m a manager, which is so dumb.

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And, you know, our cultural centers are all managers not directors and we get paid lower
than literally everybody else on campus. We have just as much, if not more work
sometimes and we get paid so much lower than everybody else. But I think having
women of color in these positions and knowing like our struggles has been really, it’s
been really evident that they’re leading with that knowledge and leading better than they
would if they didn’t have that knowledge if they didn’t know what that was like.
Transparency and information-sharing was critical for effective mentorship, as mentors who
want to ensure the success of their mentees are essentially passing down and teaching what they
have learned to their mentees (Merriam et al., 1987). Frida’s supervisor was transparent with her
about the salary and that she would be receiving the highest amount possible. In addition, she
was honest with Frida that negotiating for a higher salary would mean taking away from the
coordinator’s salary. Frida took a step back and realized that the change in salary for her
coordinator would be more significant at that level. Frida also realized that women of color
professionals are equipped to have such important conversations with fellow women of color
colleagues and supervisees. Echoing the point that Carmela made, the sharing of information was
important for women of color to advocate for each other as well as to lead in a way that honors
the experiences and struggles that women of color face in higher education administration and
student affairs. By having honest conversations in peer mentorship relationships, the goal for the
participants was to shift the culture from secrecy to transparency, to change the structure from
within, and to ensure that pay inequities did not continue to negatively affect women of color
professionals entering the field.
While Frida saw this experience as an example of how women of color support each
other by being transparent with information, this instance also highlighted the systemic inequities

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that women of color mid-level managers operated within and the difficult choices that were
made. The tensions that exist within this scenario show that as mid-level managers, women of
color had to choose between advocating for themselves or for their supervisees, who in this case,
was also a woman of color. This is connected back to Carmela’s point about the salary disparities
that Latina women face in society overall (macrosystem). These injustices then bled into the
structural inequities at PWIs (exosystem) as women of color in mid-level management positions
and entry-level positions were unknowingly fighting against each other when it came to
allocation of resources, such as funding for salaries. Although Frida’s supervisor may have had
the best of intentions with being transparent with her, it is evident in this example that even her
supervisor was limited with regards to advocacy for her direct reports (Frida and the program
coordinator). The power structure of the PWI (exosystem) operated on a scarcity model, and was
an extension of the inequities experienced at the macrosystem level. Women of color sought
support among each other, because the system (PWIs) refused to provide the support that they
needed, whether it is through social or financial means. An abundance model might have allowed
Frida the opportunity to negotiate a higher salary without it affecting the salary of her
coordinator.
Mentorship acted as a vehicle to propel new and mid-level professionals in their careers,
and participants were able to benefit from mentorship from senior leaders. The guidance that
they received from associate deans and deans facilitated their own professional aspirations to
achieve higher positions, especially when they themselves did not realize they were capable. As
seen in the literature, mentorship was not just for professional advancement but also for personal
support (Chang et al., 2014; Tran, 2014). There was an innate sense of responsibility that they
were taught through the process of mentorship, that they must also lift women of color and help

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them to advance professionally, sometimes at their own expense. This was seen through Gloria
and Mimi’s stories, in which their mentors knew that for them to advance, they needed to leave
their departments. This was also seen in Frida’s story, as she chose for her program coordinator
to have the $5,000 in salary over herself. Additionally, participants saw mentorship as an avenue
to find community in spaces that were otherwise alienating and isolating, which further
supported the theme of creating networks found in the research literature (Chang et al., 2014;
Tran, 2014). Through finding solidarity, mentorship positioned the participants to recapture
agency in their mid-level management positions and allowed them to feel as if they could
accomplish change at a greater level. As Alarcón and Bettez (2017) have studied, peer
mentorship served as acts of resistance in hopes to transform the institution from within. This is
in line with moving from a damage-centered to a more desire-centered approach (Tuck, 2009).
Although there were ways in which mentorship alone was not successful in shifting the status
quo, peer mentorship acted as a way for participants to see what could be possible through
collaborations with like-minded colleagues. Mentorship was not only a way for mentors to
support mentees in their professional goals, but it also became a way to re-envision a culture that
can be supportive of each other.
In the following section, I will be focusing on shared leadership as a way to respond to
the hierarchical and non-transparent culture of PWIs (exosystem). By moving towards a shared
leadership model, women of color leaders were able to create more lateral, reciprocal structures
in which power, responsibility and information are shared among the members of the units
(mesosystem, exosystem). As will be discussed later in this section, senior leadership roles also
served as ways to impact change. However, through exhibiting shared leadership in their current
roles, they were also demonstrating that change can happen at all levels. This impacted their

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leadership aspirations as they were branching out into new ways of thinking of what it looked
like to lead by prioritizing shared leadership.
Shared Leadership as a Response to Structure and Culture of PWIs
As the literature stated, one of the components of leadership identity is how an individual
person views the meaning of being a leader (Hammond et al., 2017). Studies have suggested that
young individuals viewed effective leadership moving from independent to interdependent, as
they acknowledged the need to collaborate among fellow leaders and colleagues (Komives et al.,
2006 as cited in Hammond et al., 2017). When assessing how individuals viewed the meaning of
a leader, Hammond et al. (2017) have documented that those who valued shared leadership
(leadership is about collaborating) exhibited a strong sense of leadership identity development.
Similarly, the experiences of women of color mid-level managers at PWIs has shaped their
leadership aspirations in the sense that they valued shared leadership as a way to respond to the
hierarchical structures of PWIs (exosystem) and their direct departments or units (mesosystem).
The inhibitors and facilitators of leadership advancement can be seen in the culture of the
organization (mesosystem) and institution (exosystem). From the findings of the study, I utilized
the definition shared by Kezar and Holcombe (2017) as the foundation, and that shared
leadership is a process and not about a specific individual. As they stated, shared leadership can
be seen through information-sharing, collaboration through team-based work, and guidance from
multiple people (Kezar & Holcombe, 2017). I expanded this definition in the following section to
also include how shared leadership was defined by the participants through the following ways:
sharing responsibility, working towards a common goal, and to have a more even playing field
where it is not about titles and hierarchy. This then created a sense of inclusion and belonging for
everyone who partook in the shared leadership model. In this section, I will first discuss the lack

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of transparency and hierarchical structure of PWIs as being inhibitors to leadership aspirations.
Eight of the participants noted that their PWIs were hierarchical in structure, had an insider-
outsider culture, and did not encourage transparency. As a result, women of color participants
saw shared leadership as being a facilitator to success in their roles. They valued the sharing of
knowledge and responsibility with their colleagues, as well as being transparent in their
communication. These served as ways to counteract the hierarchical structures that often
prevented the free-flowing of information to those in mid-level management positions such as
themselves. Their experiences with different structures and cultures at the PWIs ultimately
shaped their own leadership styles going forward, as will be discussed later in this section.
Hierarchical Structure of PWIs
The historic foundations of IHEs point to a structure in which presidents and chancellors
oversaw the operations and direction of colleges and universities (Lucas, 2006). As a result,
many PWIs today are structured with positions such as president or chancellor at the top, in
which varying positions such as vice president or vice chancellor, deans, assistant deans follow
the chain of command. The schools and departments housed within the university are often
siloed and they often follow their own internal processes (Keeling et al., 2007).
Because of the hierarchical power structure of PWIs, seven participants in this study felt
that authority and information were hoarded at the top, and may not always be shared with other
administrators or constituents. When asked to re-envision leadership, Frida aspired for an
institutional culture in which responsibilities are shared:
I think it would be much more communal like much more like there is a task to do,
someone just do it. There’s opportunity here and we’re not we’re not going to hoard
information. We’re not going to hoard opportunity. And I think that’s what we’ve been

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doing like “Oh, we’re going to give the most resources.” It's like, the same things that we
hate, that we like fight against, we do. Like, oh, if you’re a senior level person you get
like infinite amount of money to do whatever you want for your professional
development and you get to like be in every opportunity at every table, but the lower you
are, the less information, the less opportunity you get. Like it shouldn’t be like that.
In this example, Frida prescribed to shared leadership in the form of collaboration through team-
based work (Kezar & Holcombe, 2017). Frida noted that leadership should be more communal
and that each individual could take on the task and complete it. In addition to a less hierarchical
structure of leadership, she hoped that through shared leadership, there would be less hoarding of
resources such as information and opportunities. She felt that senior leaders upheld those
hierarchical structures through their lack of transparency and inability to share the wealth of
opportunities with those that may be in lower positions. She also referred to the hoarding of
opportunities, which showed the hierarchical structures at PWIs led to the overall belief that
resources were limited and abilities to advance were also finite. When Frida spoke about the
fighting over resources, she was alluding to the scarcity mindset that was sometimes present at
IHEs (Alfred, 2012). This mindset drove individuals within the PWI to be more competitive with
each other, rather than sharing resources with each other. Frida stated that “the same things that
we hate, that we fight against, we do,” meaning that she as well as other colleagues like her may
have been easily sucked into this culture of competitiveness because of the belief that there were
not enough opportunities to be shared. But she was resisting the hierarchical structure and the
competitive culture that it bred, and believed that one’s ability to access opportunity should not
be reliant on their title or position. In other words, one should not have to aspire to senior
leadership positions in order to have access to opportunities and leadership.

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Another participant, Joyce, also brought up an example in one of her journal entries in
which she felt the hierarchical structure was a hindrance to being successful and effective in her
role. She felt that she could not speak up because of her position and where she was situated
within the power structure of her institution. She shared a recent event in which the university
leadership was discussing potential budget cuts due to low student enrollment as a result of the
pandemic. When student resources such as the counseling center were threatened to be cut, she
pushed back and asked questions that made some of the leaders uncomfortable. Her supervisor
discussed this with her afterwards and stated:
“Joyce, I don’t think you should have asked that question. Because it’s above your
paygrade.” And I was like, “Oh, so this has to do with economics? Like, I shouldn’t ask a
question, because the people who make the decision get paid more than me?” Great. So,
when do people actually get held accountable for making decisions? And how do you
make decisions and, you know, all these other things, and I was just like, so frustrated,
because I felt like I guess it was more about my age, or how much I got paid. Or me just
being a woman, because the people who were answering were White men. So, I felt like
it was a bad experience. The person who said it was above my pay grade was the Black
man. And he was just like, “I don’t want to cause any trouble.”
The statement from her supervisor of this being “above [her] paygrade” showed that the PWI
very much upheld a hierarchical structure, in which senior leaders (those who get paid more than
Joyce) were the individuals who made the important decisions, and did not appreciate those
decisions being questioned. Mid-level managers such as Joyce were then disempowered to
question or critique these decisions by their own supervisors. This then upheld the hierarchical
structure in ways that those with higher salaries were the authority figures, and those beneath

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them carried out their decisions, no questions asked. The statement of not wanting to “cause any
trouble” showed that there is a culture of complacency that accompanied the hierarchical
structure of the PWI. Power was unevenly distributed, with much of the authority residing at the
top. This went against the idea of shared leadership that focused on the process and not on the
individual, and that authority can come from multiple places (Kezar & Holcombe, 2017). Joyce’s
workplace was structured in a way that only those within a certain paygrade made important
decisions, and those in mid-level management positions like Joyce and her supervisor received
the message that questioning the institution was not welcomed or acceptable. Intersectionality
also came up in the example she shared. Her identities as a woman of color rose to the surface as
she mentioned being in a meeting with mostly White men, and her supervisor, a Black man. She
noted that she may have felt stifled due to her being a young woman of color. At PWIs where
authority figures were often White men, women of color experienced the double-bind of being a
woman and a person of color as they attempt to challenge the status quo, yet their voices were
further suppressed by colleagues who advised them to “not cause any trouble.”
The hierarchical structure of PWIs is significant to note as it acted as an inhibitor to
participants’ leadership aspirations and actually pushed the women of color mid-level managers
in the study to reframe their ideas of leadership. The participants in this study then strived for a
more shared leadership model as a response to their own experiences of having been stifled when
criticizing senior leadership and their actions. They saw the benefit of questioning decisions and
wanted to create an environment where multiple people feel empowered and engaged in the
decision-making processes of their institution, irrespective of their official titles. This will be
further discussed later in this section.

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Lack of Transparency at PWIs
In addition to the hierarchical structure of PWIs, the lack of transparency was another
challenge and inhibitor that participants faced when navigating PWIs. As Kezar and Holcombe
(2017) stated, one of the main components of shared leadership was information sharing. The
lack of information-sharing and transparency influenced the leadership aspirations of six
participants in the study. Having seen the value of sharing information in an environment that
lacked transparency, they shared that they have a desire to become more transparent leaders
within their units and going forward in their professional career. Similar to Frida, Carmela
developed a sense of what leadership should look like through her own experiences at the PWI.
Carmela centered transparency and accountability within her definition of a leader. When asked
how she developed that definition of a leader, she attributed it to instances in which she
experienced the lack of transparency firsthand. She noted that:
I’ve been in this role for a year now. But I’ve been in this office since 2016 so for four
years. And so, I think one, it’s a little bit of like some of what leaders have done and then
sometimes what they don’t do that then makes me feel like I think the transparency thing
for me is so important because, unfortunately, like some of the folks I have in the past,
and even recently, been supervised by are not transparent and when I’ve kind of call that
out as like “Well, you didn’t tell me” right? And so. like I’ve kind of called that out, it
has become that like “well I was like waiting to have all the information” or “well I
didn’t want to tell you until we knew for sure.” Which is really frustrating to me because
I was like, “but that directly impacts me.” And so, I think some things like transparency
is like, well, I haven't really had a lot of that. So, to me, I'm like, Ooh, like, okay, that
kind of shows me as I’m developing my own leadership and my own life skills and tools

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and knowledge that showing me like what I would as a leader, I would hope I wouldn’t
do.
Studies have shown that when information is shared frequently and shared leadership was
present, this influenced team performance in positive ways such as increased effectiveness (Hoch
et al., 2010 as cited in Kezar & Holcombe, 2017). Similarly, Carmela realized how important
sharing information was when there was no exchange of information in her workplace and how it
was directly impacting her. When reflecting on her own experiences and what she has seen
through past and current supervisors, transparency in their communication was not present. Her
need to call out the lack of transparency also showed that she was taking active steps to address
this issue. However, she experienced additional frustration when her supervisors failed to see
how their withholding information impacted her. Through these experiences, she understood that
as a leader, she had the power to impact another person through what information was shared.
Transparency was something she valued as it signals how much a leader does care about the
impact of decisions on students, staff, and faculty. She aspired to center transparency within her
leadership style as she continued in her professional journey.
Joyce also commented on her own frustrations with the lack of transparency of her
organization. She shared in the journal entry that initially she thought the experience was
negative, but after further reflection, she realized that:
Then it was good, because it showed the true colors of the organization. And for me, true
colors mean that they’re not really about equity or about transparency. They’re just about
like getting through this pandemic, and really trying to save themselves. And that’s one
of the things that stood out to me… 20 people on the smaller meeting [were present], and
then like six people on the larger meeting. And they were all equal, like, all of our

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leadership was equal with the exception of like some vice presidents and associate vice
presidents. But I think the lack of being able to know when you’re supposed to ask
questions, I think, maybe frustrated me. And, like the idea that everybody says that we’re
supposed to be transparent and thoughtful, but they’re really not. I don’t know. I have
some feelings about it.
She gained something from this initially negative experience as she was able to see the
organization for what they truly represented. Although the institution espoused transparency, the
senior leadership did not encourage it during their meeting, which showed that this value was not
reflected in their actions. Joyce shared her frustration as she experienced firsthand the disconnect
between what the PWI in which she worked claimed to stand for and what they actually did
stand for. This went against what shared leadership looked like in action, in which there was a
flow of information between team members (Van Amejde et al., 2009 as cited in Kezar &
Holcombe, 2017) and that each member was involved in the decision-making process (Kezar &
Holcombe, 2017). The frustration that Joyce experienced was not only the lack of transparency
and information-sharing, but also not knowing when it was appropriate to speak up because of
the culture dominating her institution. In this case, Joyce saw the lack of transparency from the
institution being tied to feelings of lack of involvement and inclusion for mid-level managers like
herself. The desire to create more lateral structures that were more inclusive will be discussed
later in this section.
The leadership aspirations for mid-level managers such as Carmela and Joyce were
shaped by these experiences with lack of transparency. Their interactions with leaders at their
institutions revealed that at the core of leadership structures was a culture of climbing the ladder
and becoming less transparent and less willing to be challenged as they ascend into senior

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leadership. This then had informed their leadership aspirations, as they strived for structures that
were less vertical and more horizontal, where information and responsibilities were shared across
groups and not distributed top-down.
Brookfield (2017) also discussed the issue of lack of transparency and that arbitrariness
and secrecy are among some of the qualities of problematic leadership of IHEs. In these types of
institutions, major decisions were rarely made with feedback from others and were often made
behind closed doors (Brookfield, 2017). Brookfield called for critically reflective leadership and
stated:
At the core of leadership is the exercise of power. Whether you lead from behind, below,
among, or in front you’re using power to help movements and organizations effect
change and to help individuals grow. But a public honesty about power is rare. Most of us
probably prefer to think that we lead by consensus and that an absence of public criticism
means we’ve persuaded people by the clarity of our arguments. The practice of critically
reflective leadership requires us not only to critique the misuse of power we see around
us but also to own up to our own abuses (p. 257).
Brookfield stated that behind the secrecy was a misuse of power. Carmela and Joyce were aware
of the power dynamics and that by being in their mid-level positions, they were not given access
to the same information as senior leaders. But in order to create a more trusting and welcoming
environment for all constituents, particularly women of color leaders, they were calling for a
more open and transparent culture. The participants wanted to create change from within by
sharing information and creating more horizontal leadership structures, which will be discussed
in the following sections.

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Moving Towards Shared Leadership
Seven participants viewed PWIs as being hierarchical and an environment that lacked or
discouraged transparency. Women of color mid-level managers in the study were drawn to
shared leadership as a way to respond to the hierarchical structure and culture of PWIs. As stated
previously, shared leadership acted as a facilitator for growth and can be defined as “moving
away from the leader/follower binary; capitalizing on the importance of leaders throughout the
organization, not just those in positions of authority; and creating an infrastructure so that
organizations can benefit from the leadership of multiple people” (Kezar & Holcombe, 2017, p.
v) and that “Leadership is a process—not an individual—and can be supported by professional
development, access to information, team-based work, and incentives” (Kezar & Holcombe,
2017, p. 3). Multiple studies have shown that shared leadership also promoted an increase in
positive team performance and increased effectiveness of an organization, partly due to an
increase in information sharing and ability to adapt to complex environments and situations
(Kezar & Holcombe, 2017). Based on these tenets, shared leadership is not reliant on a top-
down, hierarchical structure, but recognizes that leadership resides in numerous places across the
organization. In addition, shared leadership emphasizes collaboration and having access to
information, further supporting the value of transparency shared among a number of the
participants, which will be discussed in this section.
Creating Lateral and Reciprocal Leadership Structures
In order for shared leadership to exist and thrive within institutions, certain elements must
be present, such as a collaborative team culture and inclusiveness where each member sought to
involve each other (Kezar & Holcombe, 2017). In response to the hierarchical structures of
PWIs, eight participants saw shared leadership as a way to develop relationships across

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teammates and distribute responsibilities horizontally, rather than disseminating power top-
down. As Frida had mentioned earlier, she aspired for a communal approach to accomplishing
tasks. She further elaborated:
With my team, I don’t ask them to do anything that I won’t do. And it’s something that I
see so many women, and especially women of color do and not a lot of men do. One of
our roles is to run the food pantry. So, when we’re on campus and it was open, you know,
we were out there in the rain, and we are out there, you know, in the hot sun like loading
things and moving, you know, pounds and pounds of food and produce in and out of the
pantry and sweeping and mopping and you know swiping cards for students and, you
know, heavy lifting in a whole lot of ways, and then also meeting with students who
have, you know, live in their cars and who have really extreme traumatic situations. And,
you know, the range of that. I think does take a lot of leadership and a lot of you know,
just making it not about you and making it about the team and what’s going to make the
team succeed.
Frida defined leadership as thinking about the team as a whole, and not just the individual. This
was very much in line to shared leadership being a process, and not about the individual (Kezar
& Holcombe, 2017). She understood that in order to succeed as a team, she needed to commit to
doing the work even in her role as a manager. This is a structure that went against the traditional
top-down structure of PWIs in which senior leaders were not on the ground, doing the same
work as entry-level or newer professional staff. In a shared leadership structure, leaders like
Frida ensured that responsibilities then became shared, in which each person, regardless of role
or title, were expected to do the same tasks to accomplish the end goal. She pointed out that she
found this to be common among women of color particularly, which was supported by previous

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studies on the culture of care among women of color (Beauboeuf-Lafontant, 2002; Fries-Britt &
Kelly, 2005).
Past research has also shown that supportive cultures in which individuals felt safe and
trusted their teammates helped with them feeling effective in their roles (Bensimon & Neumann,
1993 as cited in Kezar & Holcombe, 2017). This was then seen in such responses from Kim, who
valued a culture of care where she felt safe and could confide in her teammates during a time of
need. The culture of care among women of color helped shape her view on leadership. In one of
her journal entries, she wrote about her supervisor and colleague who both identified as women
of color and the way they supported her during a time where she had to travel to attend to family
emergencies:
Both my supervisor and counterpart have been immensely supportive of me. They have
asked how I am doing, what ways they can support me, and what they can do to help me
in my role. For instance, on a Sunday while traveling, my counterpart texted me saying
that she can take lead on a meeting the next day that I completely forgot about. Her
thoughtfulness and ability to anticipate my needs was a true sign of support. The
authentic care and concern have been so refreshing and alleviated a lot of stress and
pressure to perform. Having the ability to be unapologetic about supporting my family
and having flexibility and support in my role is something I recognize is not true for all
workplaces. I plan to use this example as an anchor for my leadership style because I
know firsthand that an employee that feels they are fully supported in both their personal
and professional pressures are the ones that remain loyal, grateful, and feel appreciated.
Kim supported this concept from past research on shared leadership in that employees who were
supported and felt safe were able to be effective in their roles and stay loyal to their institutions.

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Kim discussed that the shared responsibility for things such as facilitating meetings was
significant, as it released stress and pressure from her and allowed her to support her family
during a difficult time. It also influenced the way she viewed leadership going forward, as she
wanted to center that value and philosophy in her future interactions with employees and
supervisees.
The culture of care did benefit women of color in terms of providing each other support,
as evidenced by Frida and Kim. Yet it also unintentionally shifted the attention away from the
core issue, which was women of color continuing to be relegated to entry level or mid-level
management positions to “do the work,” and the responsibility of support lied with each other.
All the while in the background, senior leadership roles that carried great influence still were
occupied by White male leaders. In 2019, it was reported that only 9% of senior leadership of
most companies in the US were women of color, in comparison to 51% of White men (Coury et
al., 2020). This represented the “broken rung” phenomenon in which women and women of
color were losing gains in terms of advancing to leadership, despite outnumbering men in entry
level management positions (Coury et al., 2020). Currently, Black and Latina women are largely
represented in lower-paying staff positions in higher education, but are not heavily represented in
more senior level or higher-paying positions (Kline, 2018; Weindling, 2018; Whitford, 2020).
Although women of color have found support and empowerment with each other, one issue that
needs to be addressed is women of color are continuing to do the work in supporting students
and student-facing staff, but not being recognized or given opportunities to advance in senior
leadership roles. Leadership at PWIs continue to be represented by White men, further
reinforcing this image that leadership is far removed and stays stagnant in terms of diversity in
representation.

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Sharing Knowledge and Transparent Leadership
In addition to sharing responsibilities, the shared leadership model meant that knowledge
and information were shared across colleagues as well. As Kezar and Holcombe (2017) stated,
information exchange led to positive outcomes such as increased effectiveness among teams. In
addition, Yosso’s (2005) community cultural wealth model emphasized that communities of
color shared information and resources with each other as a way to help build each other up and
one individual’s success is the group’s collective success, as that individual is also able to help
build others in their community (Yosso, 2005). This concept from Yosso’s model was seen in the
participants’ experiences with sharing information. As mentioned previously, six participants
shared that they valued transparent leadership and hoped to embody that in their current and
future roles. Sonya stressed the importance of sharing knowledge as being a critical piece for a
department or unit’s success as she stated:
I have worked under a lot of different types of managers and I feel like that has really
developed, who I want to be as a leader. I’ve seen, you know, departments go stagnant by
one person only knowing that information, departments relying only on one person,
knowing that information. I feel like if you just share the knowledge…what I do, that
even at my old job, I supervise like 15 people. It didn’t matter if you were a student
worker or you had a higher position. Everyone knew the same thing. Because I felt like it
was important for everyone to step in and not make people feel less than based on their
title.
Through her experiences of working with different departments and leaders, she understood that
units could not grow through the lack of information sharing. This type of structure led to many
people relying on one person who had access to the information. This realization drawn from

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personal experiences helped shape Frida’s philosophy as a leader, which was to ensure equitable
access to information across her team. As she had mentioned previously, the title was not
important to her. Rather, each member, including student employees, had the same access to the
same information as everyone else on her team. This created a more lateral, horizontal structure
of shared responsibility, in which information was not restricted by title or position and each
member felt like an equal contributor to the team’s success. This is aligned with the shared
leadership model, sharing knowledge and responsibilities led to individuals feeling empowered
and teams being more interdependent (Kezar & Holcombe, 2017). Frida’s goal was to make sure
each team member felt empowered as they were critical for each other’s success. Her behavior as
a team leader was informed by what she learned not to do through her own experiences being led
by others who demonstrated a top-down hierarchical, less transparent approach.
Carmela also felt similarly with sharing information, and that each individual should feel
empowered to have access to information. She theorized that some leaders withheld information,
not out of spite, but out of wanting to look out for their team. She stated:
And sometimes I think that some leadership is trying... at least, the way I’ve been feeling
lately, is like they trying to like shield me almost, right. But I don’t really want to be
shielded, and I think it’s my decision. If I want you to shield me, I should be able to tell
you that, like, “Nope, that's not that’s like above me. I don’t want to” or like, “yes, I want
to know.” I’d rather have you just ask me versus like me finding out in like some of these
weird ways or meetings that don't make sense. So yeah, I think some of it just comes
from, like, sometimes when I think someone I consider a leader is lacking in an area. I’m
like, that makes me be like, oh, I really do actually appreciate transparency and didn’t
realize how much I appreciated it until I didn't have it.

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Carmela reflected on the leadership’s motive behind withholding information, and connected it
to possibly wanting to protect other staff members. But for Carmela, this action caused more
harm than good as it disempowered employees such as herself from choosing whether they had
access to that information. According to her, the decision on who had access to information
should not rest on senior leadership. But rather, all employees should be able to take part in that
decision-making process. This echoed the points brought up by other participants on the need to
share responsibility and share information. As a result of her experiences at the PWI, Carmela
concluded that she valued transparency because she saw the deleterious effects of the absence of
transparency at her current institution. As Brookfield (2017) stated, “some of the most important
insights into effective leadership have come from awful experiences with those who exercise
authority over me” (p. 248). To Carmela, transparent leadership did not equate to divulging
information to all individuals at all times. Her re-envisioning of what transparent leadership
could look like came in the form of giving individuals a choice, to ask them what they would like
to do with that information, rather than restricting access for the sake of protecting them. Under a
shared leadership model, sharing of information also led to team members feeling empowered
(Kezar & Holcombe, 2017). Carmela’s desire for a more transparent culture stemmed from her
wanting to feeling more empowered by having access to information that could help or harm her.
Past research has shown that women and members of certain cultural groups often
gravitated towards shared leadership and collaborative models as means to create more inclusive
organizational environments (Astin & Leland, 1991 as cited in Kezar & Holcombe, 2017; Kezar
2000, 2002a, 2002b as cited in Kezar & Holcombe, 2017; Kezar & Moriarty, 2000 as cited in
Kezar & Holcombe, 2017; Rhode, 2003 as cited in Kezar & Holcombe, 2017). Through shared
leadership, the top-down structure is upended, and all members of the team are empowered to

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instill change, not just those with positional leadership. In order to achieve shared leadership,
Kezar and Holcombe (2017) recommended institutions to adopt shared leadership through
empowering staff members and distributing authority, so they too feel encouraged to act as
leaders in their own roles (Kezar & Holcombe, 2017). This can occur with open communication
and less restrictions in terms of the flow of information (Kezar & Holcombe, 2017). As shared
by the participants in this section, they have seen firsthand how a hierarchical structure and lack
of transparency negatively affected their work and the organization. This often has deleterious
implications for women and women of color who tend to be in less senior leadership positions in
IHEs (Kline, 2018; Weindling, 2018; Whitford, 2020). Through their desires to share
responsibility more evenly across their teams and through their sharing of knowledge and
information, the participants in this study demonstrated the importance of and desire to share
leadership in their own units. This was connected back to their experiences that shaped their
leadership aspirations in the sense that they re-envisioned how leadership could look like in their
current units (mesosystem). In their roles as mid-level managers, they centered shared leadership
as an alternative way of leading, in an environment that was very hierarchical (exosystem). In
addition, the lessons they have learned as a mid-level manager and the value of shared leadership
was something that they will carry with them as they advance into higher leadership roles, as a
way to enact change at a larger level. To connect it back to the conceptual framework, the
inhibitors that women of color MLMs faced were the hierarchical structures of PWIs
(exosystem) and the lack of transparency within their units (mesosystem). They saw shared
leadership as a facilitator and factor for their ability to persist at PWIs and their motivation to
continue on their leadership journeys so that they can also promote the sense of shared leadership
among others. By embodying shared leadership in their current and future roles, they hoped to

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challenge what leadership looked like at PWIs (mesosystem, exosystem) and ultimately what
leadership could look like in the field of higher education and beyond (macrosystem).
In the next section, I will be discussing how women of color connected to a larger
purpose as the main driver of their leadership aspirations, such as centering social justice and
equity in their work within higher education and beyond (macrosystem). I will discuss how their
desire to change the culture of PWIs also served as part of the motivation to serve in senior
leadership roles in higher education (exosystem). I will then discuss how their desire to create
change went beyond higher education and moved into areas such as policy work, as women of
color thought creatively and strategically about how they can continue to contribute to change
when their current role or institution was not open to such change being enacted (exosystem,
macrosystem).
Connection to larger purpose
The experiences of women of color mid-level managers at PWIs in this study have
shaped their leadership aspirations, with their connection to a larger purpose being the driving
force of their actions. Eight of the participants shared that their commitment to center social
justice and equity in their work came from their desire to help marginalized populations and
make a broader impact (macrosystem). This commitment was seen in how they engaged with
colleagues and students within their units (mesosystem) and the overall institution (exosystem).
For a few of the participants, their centering of social justice was seen as a facilitator to
advancement as four participants shared that they were very determined to continue in their
pursuits for senior roles such as dean and vice president, in hopes of making a change at their
PWIs and IHEs (exosystem). In contrast, there were six participants who expressed they were
open to contributing to change outside of higher education (macrosystem) or at different types of

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positions within higher education (exosystem). Regardless if they decided to aspire to senior
leadership roles within higher education, or if they were open to leadership opportunities outside
of higher education, the eight participants connected it back to their internal mission of centering
social justice and equity.
Centering Social Justice and Equity
Six participants mentioned that centering social justice and equity was integral to the
work that they do with students, staff, and faculty members on their campuses, and that this
commitment is what shaped their own leadership aspirations. Their commitment to social justice
and equity thus acted as a facilitator and motivator to push forward in their professional journeys.
During the pandemic, Savi learned that leading with compassion and centering social justice was
important as she stated:
I think just some general compassion and recognizing again the human capital that we
have on our campuses. And another aspect for me, and not only because this matches
some of my identity, but also because these are issues that I care deeply about: An
emphasis and intentional centering of minoritized folks and identities and also of social
justice and diversity and equity and so really making sure that that work is infused in
everything that we do. I think that in student affairs, in particular, we get kind of caught
up in “we need to have this in multicultural affairs or intercultural affairs” or whatever
it’s called, and it needs to be everywhere. I’ve had people try to send me DEI positions.
And I’m like, that's not of interest to me, for a whole host of reasons. One, I don’t want to
get pigeonholed as the Black woman who’s doing diversity/equity work, but also because
we need it in advising, we need it in residence life. We need it in everywhere.

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Her leadership philosophy was centered on supporting the whole person, particularly after seeing
the impact of COVID on herself and her team members. In addition to being compassionate and
empathetic to others, she believed that social justice and equity should be the driving force of the
work of leadership, and that it should be present in different offices and departments on campus,
not just isolated to certain positions or offices dedicated to diversity, equity or multicultural
affairs. By stating that she had no interest in DEI positions, she was showing that her leadership
aspirations were not restricted by the title, the type of position, or the department, and that it need
not be a DEI-specific role. Rather, she took the firm stance that diversity and equity need to be at
the forefront of the work, regardless if it is in her current area of academic advising or in another
area such as residence life.
Similarly, Carmela believed that although she was unsure of her next steps, she would
like to continue working towards creating equitable access for first-generation, low-income
students of color in higher education as she stated:
I would like to, you know, move up. I don’t know exactly how high on the practitioner
side, I think in five years, like if I could maybe be like a director when I think of like a
title, I guess. But yeah, I guess I just hope to like feel like I’m making an impact, still
providing similar services to students, trying to like push for change, trying to make
college more equitable, which will take forever, given like everything and like how
we’ve never super valued higher ed and for like students of color and first-gen students…
And I think it can look differently. I just don't think that I see myself going to like other
areas of higher ed. Unless it’s got like a specific focus so like I know sometimes like
admissions will have like recruitment stuff, but like, sometimes they do have, like, you
know, roles that’s like recruitment for first-gen students. So, I don’t see myself being

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outside of that type of role. So, I do always feel like I will be, I would hope, just because
that’s like my passion is like continuing to work with like first-gen, low-income students
of color.
Carmela expressed her desires to potentially moving up to a director position, while also still
making incremental change in higher education. She stated that she would be open to different
types of positions and departments such as admissions, as long as it allowed her to continue her
work with first-generation students. This demonstrated that her professional actions and mobility
among different departments in higher education was connected to her wanting to make a change
or positive impact related to creating access for underrepresented students such as first-
generation students and students of color. Her aspirations were connected not to a senior
leadership title, but to the work that she would be engaged in.
What became their motivation was not the titles or positions, but instead participants like
Savi and Carmela were centering their commitment to social justice as well as serving
historically marginalized students such as first-generation students in their work and leadership
aspirations. Their values were the facilitator for their professional actions. By centering these
values, their actions were guided by that commitment to make change at any level, and that they
did not want to stray far away from that commitment regardless of what position comes next.
Desire to Change the Culture of PWIs
As previously mentioned, the participants discussed that PWIs did not often have a
culture of transparency or information-sharing and were very hierarchical and siloed. Ten
participants also noted that PWIs were not open to criticism or change. These experiences to this
type of culture of not being open to change informed how they viewed leadership and their
aspirations. Five participants shared how they as leaders wanted to change the culture of PWIs as

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a result of their experiences within these environments. Kim shared in her journal entry that her
perception of leadership has changed in the following ways:
My concept of leadership has changed in ways that I wasn’t anticipating. My philosophy
of leadership really centered around building coalitions, role modeling, and listening.
And now I see my leadership philosophy including the critical component of speaking up
for identities not at the table. I felt like speaking up was important before… but now after
three to four months I see how influential my positionality plays on the experience of
university stakeholders and why my voice and perspective is needed for culture and
climate change. From search committees to strategic planning meetings, I’ve been
surprised why certain questions or resources around identity or DEI work aren’t
mentioned. I’ve come to the realization that questions and resources and identity are not
raised because it is not the lens of the majority makeup of these search teams or planning
groups.
Through her presence at these discussions, she realized that it was critical for her to be there and
for speak up for groups not represented. Particularly when thinking about issues that can directly
impact these groups, it is often looked through the lens of those in leadership which are roles
often occupied by White men. Kim shared that her view of leadership expanded beyond
coalition-building, but to also include the ability to advocate for underrepresented groups as well
as to change the culture of the institution.
Mimi also spoke about wanting to change the culture at her institution, as its culture was
not open to being questioned. She mentioned that senior leadership at the PWI valued harmony,
and as a result, she stated that:

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It was just, I think, a really challenging space that then took me several years to get to the
place where I felt comfortable speaking up again in those type of environments. And so, I
feel like the culture that I started picking up on was like say nice things about the
institution but never question it. Like, you know, you either like drink the Kool Aid and
you really buy in or you like, shut up and get out. And I will like, as I mentioned earlier,
this institution is like such a deep part of my experience and life, and I am really invested
in staying here and trying to make it the best place it can be for students of color and for
staff and faculty of color as well. And so, I didn’t want to just shut up or get out. I
wanted, I want to invest and I think I've just been really fortunate that there were other
people who were also seeing this problematic culture.
Mimi perceived the senior leadership as only wanting to hear positive things and not be
challenged. Questioning was not encouraged. Previous literature has shown that universities may
suffer in the long-run due to their inflexibility to adapt to changing environments (Friedman et
al., 2005). Instead, universities were urged to become more like learning organizations in which
they are able to change their behavior in light of new information and gained knowledge (Garvin,
1993 as cited in Friedman et al., 2005). For Mimi, the tenets of a learning organization were seen
in her wanting the organization to change, and she understood there was a misalignment of what
her institution valued versus what she herself valued. In spite of this culture that wanted to
maintain a false sense of harmony, she was still committed to stay, particularly to make it a
better environment for the students of color as well as staff and faculty of color. Having like-
minded colleagues also provided another level of support and acted as an additional motivator to
stay and make change at her PWI. This was connected back to peer mentorship as a way to
promote structural change (Alarcón & Bettez, 2017; Tran, 2014). Her commitment to a larger

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purpose informed her decision to stay and attempt to make changes at an organization in which
she experienced a culture that was not receptive to change.
Gloria also shared that she would like to influence more substantial change at her
institution and beyond. She stated:
I do know that the structures of student services specifically are changing quite frequently
to do like one of two things: either to make things more streamlined or to have less hands
in the pot and so that we’re not working as entirely siloed departments, and functioning
as a division as a whole. And so, I feel like my end goal is eventually to be not even
necessarily a president but like in the chancellor’s executive team capacity. To implement
strong change instead of small systemic changes. I want to be able to shape an entire
college or district to actually function and meet the needs of our students as a whole,
because it pains me to see one department going above and beyond and then other
departments just kind of failing. And I feel that that comes from just people being too far
removed from the student experience to see that. So, I feel like I would still stay in the
same mindset that I have of being present and being available for students and not being
this hidden figure.
Gloria acknowledged that perhaps those in senior leadership positions acted as “hidden figures,”
and have been far removed to understand that larger change was needed versus small,
incremental changes. This approach may have also contributed to institutions such as hers to
continue being siloed. Her goal was to address the siloed environment of the PWI and to create
larger scale change that can then influence improvements across the division and district. To do
this, Gloria felt it was important to move outside of department-specific leadership roles and into
more system-wide, senior leadership roles such as those in the executive team. Similar to

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Carmela and Savi, she understood that the end goal should always be about the students, and her
desire to change the institution came from wanting to serve the students, which will be further
discussed in the next section.
Senior Leadership Roles as Pathway for Change: Being the Bridge for Students and Staff
As discussed in the literature, representation of women of color in senior leadership roles
was important as they were able to serve their communities as well as show others what was
possible (Gray, 2018). Out of the 14 participants, 11 of the participants shared that representation
of women of color in leadership positions were important to them. Faith had shared in her
journal entry that:
As a plus-size, African American, gay, woman, and first-gen, I want to be a role model. I
want others with my identity to know they can be a leader, hold a title of leadership and
be a leader. When I was growing up, there weren’t a lot of Black Women in position of
power. There were very few teachers, no principles, no store owners…When I went to
college it much of the same. Even at my present institution, there are very few Black
women leaders, but more than Black men leaders. So, as I have made my journey to
where I am today, being a woman of color has been a major player on me being who I am
now.
For Faith, she did not have leaders that looked like her or represented her multiple identities. She
understood the importance of being a leader in student affairs and that it also meant being a role
model to future generations of students and new staff members. She wanted to send a message
that they can occupy these positions of influence in higher education and beyond.
This was also present for the women of color participants in the study, as they saw senior
leadership positions as a way to serve as role models for others. Four participants were in

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alignment with this idea as they were very much determined to seek senior leadership roles at
IHEs. They saw this route as being the pathway to make change in higher education. When
thinking about their future aspirations, participants such as Gloria and Sonya mentioned that they
would like to be senior leaders in order to impact change for students. Gloria wanted to help
students succeed as she stated:
Because I feel like I feel very passionately about it in terms of what I want to see happen
for our students, I’m always looking at the capacity that nobody ever has to fail in order
for others to succeed. You know that we can all eat. Nobody needs to struggle in order
for other people to see, you know, success. So ideally, in the next five years, I would like
to be in a dean position and I'm not entirely sure if it’s at my college. I left my previous
institution because it wasn’t an environment that was helping me. It was more so again,
maintaining the status quo, and just existing as is to make other people comfortable.
As Mimi also mentioned, many PWIs maintained a culture of status quo, which was why Gloria
left her previous institution. She mentioned that she would like to be a dean, but by saying “I’m
not entirely sure if it’s at my college,” she alluded to the fact that if she did not see it as an
environment that would help her, she would move elsewhere to achieve her goals. This showed
that she aspired to higher leadership roles where she can support students, but that it was not tied
to a particular institution. She understood that she can influence change as a dean at any
institution, and that the main goal was to support students, not necessarily to stay loyal to her
current institution. In addition, part of her goal of implementing change was also to change the
mindset that dominated most PWIs and IHEs, which was the scarcity mindset. Gloria brought up
scarcity and abundance mindset in her phrase of “nobody ever has to fail in order for others to
succeed.” Scarcity mindset refers to the thinking that everything is finite, including opportunities

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and success, and by taking a piece of the overall pie, you leave less for others (Castrillon, 2020).
She recognized that at PWIs and at IHEs in general, there was a mindset that only a few could
succeed, whereas others may fail. Gloria challenged the scarcity mindset with an abundance
mindset, stating that all students can succeed, and she wanted to promote that philosophy through
her own leadership, thus shaping her aspirations to a deanship where resources for departments
were controlled:
Sonya also believed in supporting students first and foremost as she stated that:
My biggest thing is, for me I think student services is where it’s at, where I want to be the
VP of Student Services at a community college because those services are so well
organized for our students. But I think the key that is lacking is a partnership. The
bridging and the communication of those services like the PR piece. I always think that’s
missing and can be totally improved and building an army with the staff that they already
have. And I just think there’s a lot of things that can be done.
Sonya’s comment spoke to the adoption of systems thinking. She believed the missing piece was
the “partnership” between student services and other components such as communication. Her
comment was connected to the idea that PWIs were siloed. Siloes were created when units within
an institution did not share information with each other, and this was typically a culture
encouraged from the top-down (Gleeson, 2013). This then perpetuated the lack of transparency
and the maintaining of the status quo at PWIs that ultimately did not serve students well. In order
to continue growing as a learning organization, institutions must encourage collaboration among
working teams and collective learning among the different units through information-sharing
(Friedman & Kass-Shraibman, 2017). The hierarchical structure and siloed nature of PWIs were
viewed as inhibitors by participants. In contrast, the desire to become more of a learning

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organization became a facilitator for continued professional growth for Sonya. She embodied
these beliefs of a learning organization in her hopes to one day be a vice president of student
services and serve as the bridge between students, staff and faculty.
Opportunities Outside of Higher Education: New Avenues to Create Change
Although advancing to senior leadership ranks in higher education administration was
perceived by some to influence change at PWIs, six participants believed that change can be
made in other areas as well. Savi expressed being open to different opportunities and
possibilities, some of which were within higher education, while other options were outside of
higher education. She stated:
So, I’m definitely looking at, because I’m basically a director without a director title. And
certainly, without director pay, and so I’m looking at formal director of advising
positions. I’m also looking at, like I mentioned, the Pacific City. It’s a policy position,
basically. And that’s definitely a route that I want to go in is doing less direct student
service work and more policy-based work, again, with an equity focus and a focus on
higher ed and education in general.
Savi’s role at the time of this study was academic and career coordinator and she supervised
academic advisors. She stated that she was doing director-level work without the title and pay,
which shows that her current institution did not acknowledge the level of work that she was
doing. Because of the lack of acknowledgement in title and pay, this led her to think about
positions outside of higher education. Joyce also broadened her perspectives out of necessity, as
she applied to different positions within higher education and was not successful. She considered
different career options as she simultaneously looked at positions in municipal offices and
community organizations. When these institutions did not fairly acknowledge women of color in

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the work that they do, this created a narrative that women of color were not rightfully
compensated within IHEs. As a result, they were pushed to look at different pathways in
influencing change. Joyce remained committed to the mission of centering social justice and
equity, but her aspirations started to span to fields outside of higher education. Here, a lack of
recognition for the work Joyce was doing was an inhibitor to her pursuing senior leadership in
IHEs.
As a result of her experiences at the PWI and the culture being resistant to change, Mimi
stated that she saw herself outside of higher education in five to 10 years:
I actually would see myself outside of higher ed. I’d love to be doing some more policy
work at the state level. But is that realistic? I don’t know. I think that takes some legwork
on my part that I haven’t really invested in. So, if I was maybe in a more realistic place, I
would say, like, I mean, maybe a director level position at the institution. I really like big
picture kind of roles. I love students like working one on one with students, but I like that
intermixed with really that big picture of policy and structural changes and so I don’t
know. This is such a good question because I’m thinking, I’m struggling with it, of like,
do I need to make a career change?
Both Savi and Mimi saw policy work as making broader change. Mimi commented that she was
very much interested in the “big picture of policy and structural changes” as it could potentially
bring about more change. She approached the interview question with some hesitancy as it was
something that pushed her to think outside of what was comfortable for her. This was connected
to her earlier statement of the PWI having a culture of harmony. She mentioned that she had
been at her PWI for about 15 years, and that the culture at her institution promoted a sense of
complacency and maintaining the status quo. For her to think about career options outside of

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higher education was a step outside of her comfort zone, but it was something that she said she
would like to explore given the potential for policy work to involve larger, sustainable change.
At the present moment, she saw more resistance to that type of change at her current institution.
Although both participants felt they made an impact through their work with students,
Savi and Mimi spoke about policy work as being a way to impact larger change. For individuals
that occupied mid-level management roles, they experienced many challenges. One of these
challenges was being responsible for enacting and upholding policies, but not in the creation or
development of policies (McClellan, 2012). As Savi and Mimi shared, they had a desire to create
policy, because they believed it was one significant way to influence change at a larger level. For
Savi, she was doing director-level work without the title and pay, and her frustration led her to
finding ways to make a change outside of higher education. For Mimi, her current institution was
not open to change, so she wanted to seek opportunities in policy work to be able to exercise the
ability to make change at the state level potentially. For both Savi and Mimi, their dedication to
helping others simply changed from serving students directly to creating policy that could help
enact long-lasting change.
Participants such as Gloria and Sonya were women of color leaders who wanted to
change the structures from within. De Oliveira Andreotti would classify this as radical reform
(2015), as those in this state “have a strong normative position that seeks to ‘fix’ the mechanisms
that produce inequalities” (de Oliveira Andreotti et al., 2015) through increased representation of
marginalized communities and expanding access (de Oliveira Andreotti et al., 2015). Gloria and
Sonya wanted to stay within the structures of higher education and aspired to roles such as dean
or vice president of student services in order to increase representation in senior leadership. On
the other hand, Savi and Mimi were operating between radical-reform and beyond-reform

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spaces, as they acknowledged that trying to change the system from within was a futile task and
that “multiple ways of knowing (grafted onto the same hegemonic ontological foundation that is
left unexamined) through strategies of equity, access, voice, recognition, representation, or
redistribution, does not change ontological dominance” (de Oliveira Andreotti et al., 2015).
Those within the beyond-reform space saw the need to break down and transform current
systems, while also leaving the university entirely and creating new alternatives (de Oliveira
Andreotti et al., 2015). This was seen in Savi and Mimi’s desire to find other options outside of
higher education as they did not see IHEs and PWIs being capable of transformative change and
they needed to seek out other options to serve as avenues of sustainable change. In the next
chapter, I will be examining the tension between wanting to make change within higher
education systems (radical-reform) through senior leadership positions, and with wanting to
initiate change outside of higher education (beyond-reform) due to their inability to impact
change from within. I will also be discussing the implications of these overarching influences
and what IHEs and PWIs can be doing to fully support women of color in a multitude of ways,
not just through professional development for advancement.
In the following section, I will be discussing how the women of color participants shared
that mental and physical well-being was important, and that being at PWIs (exosystem) have
contributed to them feeling emotionally, mentally and physically exhausted and drained. They
also shared their desire to prioritize their family (microsystem) and that they experienced
professional and personal conflicts when trying to balance work and family expectations. They
also shared the inner conflicts they experienced when attempting to balance family-related
expectations along with work expectations (microsystem). This then influenced their overall

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decision to pursue leadership aspirations, as they felt social, personal and familial pressures to
uphold certain standards of working mothers (macrosystem).
Prioritizing Family and Well-Being
The experiences that have also contributed to women of color mid-level managers and
their leadership aspirations were related to factors that affect their ability to maintain work-
family balance as well as protect or support their physical and mental well-being. Previous
studies have also shown that women of color and their decisions to advance were connected to
their wanting to maintain work-life balance (Alleman et al., 2018). The inhibitors to their pursuit
of advanced leadership roles were seen in their departments (mesosystem) and the PWIs
(exosystem), as participants said their units and/or institutions added responsibilities to women
of color, which then contributed to the feelings of exhaustion and cultural taxation (explained in
further detail below). In addition, the job expectations were often in conflict with their ability to
be present for their families, which led to some participants to choose a position that allowed for
work-family balance, often not in senior leadership roles. They also received broader societal
messages (macrosystem), such as the pressure to raise a family, feelings of imposter syndrome
and not feeling like they were enough. This section will discuss how these factors acted as
deterrents from senior leadership roles, as participants felt the need to choose their families and
well-being over what is normally viewed as the path to professional advancement.
Feelings of Being Emotionally and Mentally Drained and Cultural Taxation
Navigating the PWIs had put an emotional strain on the women of color participants in
this study. Nine participants noted feeling drained, with six participants connecting these feelings
of exhaustion to cultural taxation at their respective institutions. The term cultural taxation was
coined by Amado Padilla (1994) and described the additional teaching and service-related

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burdens on faculty of color primarily (Padilla, 1994 as cited in Joseph & Hirshfield, 2010). But
this concept can also be applied to staff of color at PWIs. At her institution, Irene recalled
instances where White colleagues would ask to be educated on matters related to race. She said:
Yeah, I’m like, just take responsibility for your actions. And if you are sincerely wanting
to learn something, read about it and also figure out how you can become active and
changing the way that you engage with people of color…I’m like, no, here we do XYZ,
and it’s not on me because me and my colleagues are exhausted. Like I have another
[colleague], he’s a man of color, like in the academic senate really trying to like make
change and help them understand. And I’m like, you are going to kill yourself
emotionally and just on all levels, trying to convince them. Like unless people are ready
to hear it and do the work themselves, you know, like we can keep strong in doing our
thing, [rather than] try to convince somebody else.
Irene acknowledged that the act of educating White colleagues was exhausting and draining. It
could “kill yourself emotionally.” As noted previously, the radical-reform approach (de Oliveira
Andreotti et al., 2015) is based on the belief that PWIs can be changed from within through
educating White colleagues, but Irene stated that the focus should be on maintaining their own
strength and “doing [their own] thing” versus trying to educate and help others who may not be
ready to do the work themselves. The effort required to educate others took a toll on her and her
colleagues, which further inhibited their ability to focus on their own development. This then
impacted their professional trajectory, as the focus then shifted from bettering themselves, to
bettering their White colleagues.
Joyce also remembered a similar instance in which she was asked by White colleagues to
join in their efforts. She stated:

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We had one of the White males decided they wanted to start an anti-racist group. And he
asked all the Black people to help and none of us said yes. So, I have no idea what he’s
actually doing. I’ve never been to a meeting because I don’t want to learn--And let’s
rephrase, I do not want to teach anybody how to be anti-racist. I’d rather you learn on
your own. I’m not the giver of knowledge. Not right now. Maybe I would be the giver of
knowledge when I was done with my dissertation and when I didn’t have to write every
night…Maybe I’ll just be like, “you know what? You need to read a book.”
The example that Joyce provided showed how Black staff are often tapped to educate non-Black
individuals, particularly during the Black Lives Matter movement during the summer of 2020.
She was aware that this was not a call to be involved but rather, an expectation for Black
individuals to give during a time (often without recognition) when she and her colleagues were
not able to give beyond their capacity. As Mena and Vaccaro (2017) have discussed, a form of
microaggression or tokenization often came in the burdening of Black women to be caretakers of
others, and to educate them on matters pertaining to Black culture (Mena & Vaccaro, 2017), thus
making them hypervisible in PWI settings (Hannum et al., 2015). These experiences of cultural
taxation and microagressions then contributed to women of color and Black women feeling
alone, unsupported and drained (Oikelome, 2017; West, 2017). The added labor placed upon
people of color, particularly women of color such as Irene and Joyce, put additional strain and
exhaustion that often went unnoticed and unaddressed. Over time, this can lead to burnout and
negatively impact their emotional and psychological well-being (Wells, 2009). This additional
strain ultimately acted as an obstacle for women of color mid-level managers in their pursuit of
their own leadership interests and aspirations.

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Microaggressions and Code-Switching
Another way that participants shared feeling drained was through experiencing
microaggressions in their daily lives. Some participants also noted experiencing
microaggressions at their institutions. Microaggressions are commonplace verbal and behavioral
acts that convey negative messages and insults towards people of color (Sue et al., 2007 as cited
as cited in Mena & Vaccaro, 2017). Frida also experienced a microaggression as she recalled an
exchange with a White male senior level staff member. She stated:
He asked me something. I was like, “Oh, I’m sorry. I didn’t hear you, because there was
somebody on the phone behind you” and he was like, “Agua, agua, por favor??” and I
was like I’m not going to do this because we have a candidate [to interview]. I'm
representing the university and I was like, “Oh, you’d like water.” And he was like,
“Yes.” And I was like, “sure. I can do that for you.” So, I went and I got him his water
and he just was like, “oh gracias.” And I was like, mmmm, you know? and I was like, I
think I didn’t even say anything, I just went into my office and so when he had to come
back to give me his papers that were filled out, you know, what he thought about the
candidate. He walked in and he sees my bachelor’s diploma and my master’s diploma
and he was talking to me like, “oh, here you go…oh can I sit down for a second and fill
this out?” I was like, “yeah.” And then he looked. He said, “Oh.” His whole demeanor
just changed and he was like “Oh, you went to Seaside University, and you have a
master’s” and is like, “wow, that’s very impressive.” And I was like, “thank you.” And he
was like, “Are you gonna get another one?” I was like, “I’m applying for the doctorate
program here” and he’s like, “wow, that's wonderful.” And like his voice changed, his
tone changed, like everything about him changed. The second that he saw those papers on

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the wall and it made me want to tear them down. Like, it made me feel so small. I'm
gonna cry. Sorry. It just, you know, I put them up there so that other people know that
like you can do it too. And it’s not like a source of, like, oh, look what I did, you know,
but it, it just made me feel like all he saw was a little Latino secretary when I walked in
and then those two little papers just made like oh now I have some dignity, because I
went to school. It was awful.
Frida experienced two forms of microaggressions, which were microinsult and
microinvalidations. Microaggressions can be divided up into three categories:
microinvalidations, microinsults, and microassaults (Sue, 2010; Sue et al., 2007, as cited in Mena
& Vaccaro, 2017). Microinsults can make one feel like a second-class citizen in the denigrating
of their cultural values and communication styles, whereas microinvalidations can cause one to
feel alien in their own land and uphold the myth of meritocracy where one can only feel worthy
once they have earned it (Sue, 2010; Sue et al., 2007, as cited in Mena & Vaccaro, 2017), as seen
in Frida’s example. In this instance, Frida experienced the microinsult as she felt like a second-
class citizen when the White male staff member butchered her native language and made her feel
inferior, insinuating that she did not understand English. He then only saw her as someone worth
addressing when he saw her diplomas hanging on the wall, which was a form of
microinvalidation as it showed that she was only valid after having “earned” her accomplishment
of a master’s degree. This interaction made her feel small and she began to cry as she was
sharing her memory. The emotions that came up for her showed the deeper impact that this
exchange had on her, as she shared how awful that situation was and how it still reminded her of
a time when she was only seen as a “little Latino secretary.” Microaggressions have made
women of color like Frida feel small, and the constant shrinking of themselves led to internalized

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feelings of inferiority and contributed to imposter syndrome. Feelings of imposter syndrome
further contributed to their self-doubt, and shaped whether they should continue pursuing
leadership at PWIs or within higher education as a whole. Unlike the facilitating factor of
mentors who helped women of color mid-level managers see themselves in ways they
themselves did not see, the experiences of microaggressions that lead to imposter syndrome were
inhibitors to leadership aspirations. The concept of imposter syndrome will be further discussed
later in this section.
Code-Switching
Experiencing microaggressions frequently drained women of color while at PWIs. What
put an additional strain on them was having to code-switch at work. Code-switching is defined as
changing one’s appearance, behavior, attire, to make those around them more comfortable and to
also possibly facilitate employment and professional opportunities (McCluney et al., 2019).
Studies have also shown that trying to conform and change their outward identities have created
an added emotional and psychological strain on individuals of color (McCluney et al., 2019).
Carmela noted that this does take a toll on her as she stated:
And I think I’m still working on this, but I think like, how can you show up like
unapologetically and like genuine? and I mean that in like, I think that we’re often told
how to be professional and what that looks like. What that means for the attire you wear,
how you talk, and things like that. And I think I was fortunate to like have folks who
were like, well, professionalism is a version of White supremacy and I was like, “wait
what?” like I should’ve known that... So, I think, like, challenging those things and then
like show up how you want to show up. But then also, like, recognizing that like, that can
mean things, right? That can mean impacts and so like you have to kind of figure out,

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like, what are you willing [to do]? I don’t think you can be your authentic self in every
space, like I definitely don’t think I can be. But like, what are the spaces I can be? And
that also I guess ties into like community. But yeah, like what are the spaces you can be,
because you’re going to need those spaces. Because code-switching or like putting a
mask on all the time is extremely exhausting. Having to switch like your language or
things like that is extremely exhausting all the time. So, like, where do you find those
places that you can just be like you?
Carmela admitted that code-switching “is extremely exhausting,” as it required being
hyperconscious of how she dressed and how she spoke. It often acted as a mask and covered up
who she truly was. Ultimately, she was putting importance on how she was received versus
showing up authentically in these spaces. She also noted professionalism being rooted in White
supremacy, and how showing up authentically can challenge White supremacy and
professionalism in PWIs. Professionalism then acted as the guise or outer surface for White
supremacist beliefs, with White male norms being the standard of what is deemed acceptable
(Kaufman, 2021). Women of color must choose between their authentic selves or their work
identities, as the two cannot co-exist at PWIs without implications for the code-switcher. This
created additional strain for Carmela as she constantly code-switched her language, appearance,
and behavior in order to be accepted at her institution. Her question of “where do you find those
places that you can just be like you?” was her acknowledging that environments that were more
welcoming of women of color’s multiple identities was needed, as that would allow women such
as herself to show up authentically and to lessen the burden of having to code-switch and take on
false personas.
Imposter Syndrome

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The act of code-switching and changing their behavior and appearance also contributed to
women of color’s suffering from imposter syndrome. The concept of “imposter syndrome” also
was first studied by Clance and Imes (1978) who examined high-achieving female clients and
students, particularly college women and women faculty, who questioned their achievements
(Clance & Imes, 1978 as cited in Edwards, 2019). Imposter syndrome often occurred among
women and women of color and is further defined as an individual thinking they are not
deserving of their achievements, and that any praise given is an overestimation of their talents
and skills (Edwards, 2019). Mimi shared that her PWI had a culture of harmony, and that she
found it difficult to disagree with those in positions of power because of the strong urge to
maintain the status quo. After an instance where she did speak up against leadership, she felt a
loss in confidence as she stated that:
Five years into my career and it took me another couple of years to feel like I had solid
footing again and confidence in speaking up and I think it kept me from moving up
actually because I was so fearful of whether I had like kind of ruined these relationships
with some of these administrators. And I think imposter syndrome then would get the
best of me, too. But um, just a real fear of whether I was going to be good enough or
whether I was going to make it in moving up and so I stayed in a role at a coordinator
level for probably five years longer than I should have because I just was so afraid of
kind of being rejected as I tried to continue to move forward.
After having advocated for students and ultimately being shut down by senior leadership, she
admitted that imposter syndrome affected her as she questioned her worth and her ability to
advance. As a result, she refrained from pursuing other opportunities out of feeling not being up
to par, as well as her fear of rejection. The culture of maintaining the status quo was the norm,

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and the message she received was that she was not good enough because she did not fit within
that culture. Some have criticized the original concept of imposter syndrome as it does not
consider oppression in the forms of racism, sexism, and classism, and that the onus is placed
unfairly on the individual versus systems of inequity (Tulshyan & Burey, 2021). Overall, the
professional anxiety of not being good enough can eventually lead to erosion of women of
color’s mental health (Nance-Nash, 2020). In Mimi’s case, her feeling of imposter syndrome
had stemmed from the pressure to conform and the fear of challenging the status quo, whereas
perhaps the institution itself needed to critically examine itself. needed to ask questions such as
why this culture was upheld and how it served to keep women of color from advancing further?
It can thus be argued that women of color should not feel as imposters, but rather the institutions
were continuing systems of oppression such as racism and sexism that maintained the status quo,
with women of color staying stagnant in entry and mid-level roles instead of given mobility to
advance to senior leadership.
Prioritizing Physical Well-being and Health
Microaggressions, code-switching, and imposter syndrome contributed to the
deterioration of women of color’s mental well-being, especially with experiences in the
workplace. In addition to mental health, one participant noted the importance of prioritizing
physical health. Toughie noted that a significant experience that affected her leadership
trajectory was her health and her medical diagnoses. Toughie shared that originally, she wanted
to pursue being a college president. She stated:
I wanted to explore it more, to be a tenured faculty member and college president, kind of
have that faculty rank at the tenured level, ideally professor, but um definitely at the
tenured level and be a president. Now I don’t know that I want to be president anymore.

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To be honest, I think I think I’ve decided to let that go…I think my goal has just changed.
I don’t think I'm interested in that anymore. I don’t know if it's because of some of the
challenging circumstances that I have had here. I think a lot of it, to be honest, has a lot to
do with me being diagnosed with a chronic illness and it has really shifted my priorities
in life. So, you hear about people that go through these kinds of traumatic experiences
and then your whole perspective, your whole paradigm...shifts and that certainly
happened to me. I am not as willing to accept the daily stress levels that I was once
willing to accept and part of that is because I just, my thinking on that has changed. I
don’t think it’s, it’s something that I am willing to do anymore…. So, I’d like to find a
position that allows me to do the community work. I like to find something that's still
focused on equity. And I’m willing to, to give up. I’m willing to sacrifice fancy titles and
like moving up in the ranks for a healthier lifestyle.
By her stating she was “willing to sacrifice fancy titles,” she acknowledged that previously, the
goal was to become a college president and to have one such title. But since her medical
diagnosis, her goals shifted and she acknowledged the stress that accompanied positions such as
president. The “fancy titles” were not a justifiable exchange for her physical health. As Toughie
mentioned, her diagnosis forced her to make difficult decisions, but ultimately, she made the
choice to prioritize her physical well-being over the possibility of becoming a college president.
Toughie’s experience showed how the stress of senior leadership positions can contribute to the
severity of her illness, and as a result she no longer wanted to pursue the position of college
presidency. This showed that women of color participants like Toughie were taking a more
active role in caring for themselves, particularly in stressful environments and situations. As
Audre Lorde (1988) stated, “caring for myself is not self-indulgence, it is self-preservation, and

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that is an act of political warfare.” Toughie understood that to step away from the pursuit of
college presidency was an act of self-preservation, and ultimately to help sustain her for the fight
ahead in community work and something that was still focused on equity.
While women of color like Toughie should be commended for taking a more active role
in prioritizing their well-being, another area to further critique was the environments in which
they felt the pressure to choose between serving in leadership roles or prioritizing their health. As
Toughie mentioned, the stress that accompanied her current role as well as the role of president
was not conducive to her health. So much so, that it led her to think of ways to lead outside the
field of higher education altogether. What will be further discussed in this section and in the
following chapter is how PWIs perpetuate this culture that does not fully embrace the multiple
identities of women of color and does not support a healthy work-family-life balance for women
of color in different walks of life.
Balancing Work and Family Life
Similar to Toughie, the women of color in the study spoke about continuously making
difficult decisions as it related to their overall well-being and quality of life. This often meant
deprioritizing professional advancement or making career choices that would be more conducive
to their personal and family life. For six participants, family and personal life was an important
factor when creating and maintaining boundaries with their work.
Creating Boundaries to Protect Family Life. When asked about her professional
trajectory and where she saw herself in five to 10 years, Lina provided some reflections on why
she was content in her current role:
That’s hard for me because I think I like the role that I’m in. I have it as I have two
kids…for now in my life, I want to be in a role where I can leave work at the end of the

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day and say, “work can wait till tomorrow.” Um, so I don’t know that there is a position
right now that I could see myself in, because my kids are little. And having a partner who
also works in higher ed. I’m like, we cannot both [be] at programs in the evenings, and
both be on-call and like responding to things throughout day and night. Um, yeah, so I
think I always thought it, like, I want a role that allows me to put my family first.
She acknowledged that it was difficult for her at first, but ultimately, her decision was based on
her priority of being present for her family. She also stated that having a partner who was also in
higher education contributed to her decision, as she understood the additional responsibilities of
student affairs roles in higher education could potentially take time away from her ability to be a
parent. By saying “we cannot both be at programs in the evenings,” Lina suggested that her
husband did have a role that required that time commitment of him. Lina prioritized her family
above professional advancement, and she also prioritized her role as a mother above work
expectations. Feminist scholars might wonder why she was the one sacrificing while her male
partner was able to pursue his career advancement interests. Lina also communicated the
importance of setting boundaries:
I think for like the individual it's telling them, like it’s okay to say what your needs are.
Right. You don’t have to bend over. Just because your work is asking you to do
something. It is okay to set those boundaries. It’s okay to say, “Nope, I'm not going to,
you know, answer an email at 9pm because of X, Y, or Z thing.” I think I also think about
it as a as a mother, right. Like, I think, whatever those boundaries are that you set. It’s
okay.
While Lina mentioned being content in her current role and not pursuing senior leadership roles,
she also understood the importance of holding steadfast to boundaries when one is a mother.

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Work expectations, particularly in student affairs, may require working beyond certain hours, but
Lina communicated being a strong proponent of enforcing strict boundaries as it pertained to her
personal life. She also saw this as a responsibility she had being a mother, and wanted to reassure
mothers like herself that “it is okay” to enforce boundaries because of another, much more
important role she had as a caretaker for her family. Her male partner who also worked in higher
education may reinforce this messaging as well, as Lina had taken the more active role in
enforcing those boundaries in her workspace. Previous literature has shown that the pressure to
maintain work-life balance are based on gendered norms of women being the primary caretakers,
thus influencing gendered working patterns as new mothers opted for more flexible work
schedules and part-time employment (McIntosh, McQuaid, & Dabir‐Alai, 2012). There is a
strong expectation for mothers to take up the brunt of the family responsibility in comparison to
working fathers. Lina’s reinforcing of boundaries came from a social pressure to protect her
family life and to deprioritize her professional career. While we did not t discuss her husband’s
career aspirations, her use of the word “mother” signals that setting boundaries matter more for
women than men.
Larger Messages About Being a Woman and Woman of Color Professional.
Working mothers such as Lina felt the pressure to prioritize family over professional life as they
received messages from society (macrosystem) that women, not men, have the primary
responsibility when it comes to child-raising (Mason & Lu, 1988; Sutherland, 2010). Because of
this value that is prominent in multiple spaces, including the workplace, working mothers often
feel the pressure to juggle being a good mother while also being a good employee. What comes
out of that pressure is often guilt that women face for falling short in either role. Lina’s message
about boundaries was in response to the guilt that working mothers faced when protecting their

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time with their loved ones. Carmela spoke about the guilt she experienced when taking on her
doctoral program while also starting off as a new mother. She stated:
And so, I think I just felt very like guilty. Well, I just started this [program], and I’m
going to ask for like a leave and now that I think back to it, it was so silly. And I’m like,
everyone, like my advisor, was really supportive. And so, but I think we just put these
pressures sometimes on us, or I think I particularly, I guess shouldn’t speak for everyone,
I think I put pressures on myself. And I think my family has expectations that I feel the
need to meet, even if they’re like, now I look at them and “well, that’s stupid” …or like
cousins who most of my cousins are stay-at-home moms, which is totally fine, if that’s
what you want to do, more power to you. That is not my goal in life personally. And
they’ve definitely made like snarky comments that, like, they just like love being home
and they can’t, you know, understand how I would choose my work over my kid. And
I’m just like, “thank you” like as much as I try to be like, “whatever, screw it,” it still gets
to you because it’s your family and I love you and I care about you and what you say
does have an impact on me.
Although Carmela initially talked about the guilt of taking the leave from her doctoral program
to raise her family, Carmela indirectly felt pressured from family members to meet certain needs
and conform to certain stereotypes. She spoke more about her cousins who chose family and to
stay at home to raise their children. This then showed that the guilt she experienced came from
choosing work and her doctoral program over her family. The pressure from family also
stemmed from a larger social message of what it means to be a “good mother.” She said family
members “can’t, you know, understand how I would choose my work over my kid.” Past studies
have shown that the guilt experienced by working mothers was a product of trying to balance

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workplace and household expectations, and that this guilt has been culturally produced and
institutionalized over time within US society (Sutherland, 2010). Her guilt was ultimately
coming from not embodying what it was to be a good mother. Her family members and even she
subscribed to this ideology that women must prioritize their family above other commitments
such as work and education.
Frida also faced inner turmoil when thinking back on choices related to her career and her
family. She expressed feeling regret or questioning whether she set herself back professionally
by choosing to start a family. She stated:
I also have a former supervisor who is very like calming and very wise, who I call to talk
about like “This is how I feel in my life.” Like, I went through a period of time where I
felt like having kids ruined …It felt like it ruined my career. And I felt like...and it wasn't
like I should not have had my kids, but it was just, I’ve never had someone to be like,
“That’s not a good choice.” Like, “you should be looking at this, you should go to
graduate school out of state. You should do these things.” I’ve had to figure out a lot on
my own. But [my mentor] was one of those people who would just calm me down and
just be like, “listen to what you’re saying. Is that even what you want? Like, how can we
reframe this?” and just helps me to be mindful and present and like talk myself back
down from whatever situation I have conjured in my head.
While Carmela felt guilt for having chosen work and her degree over her family, Frida also had
similar feelings of guilt and regret choosing her family over advancing in her career. This
showed the false dichotomy that working cultures at institutions, including PWIs, have created
for women and women of color. They felt that they had to choose one track: either tending to
their family, or pursuing professional opportunities. Benard and Correll (2010) studied the

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Motherhood Penalty phenomenon in which working mothers were discriminated against for
exhibiting qualities such as assertiveness and commitment to work, which are considered
masculine and are less motherly (Benard & Correll, 2010). As a result of this persistent ideology,
many working mothers feel that they have to fit within one box: either a woman who is
committed to her family or a woman who is hyper-focused on her career. The Motherhood
Penalty does not allow for both to coexist. As evidenced by Carmela and Frida, these choices
influenced their own perception at the macrosystem level of what a good mother should look
like, or what a woman should be doing to advance in her career.
Carmela, Frida and Lina spoke about the pressures to maintain work-life balance,
particularly as women of color and as mothers. What must also be further examined in the
concept of work-life balance and how its origins also have placed unfair pressures on women of
color. Glenn (1990) spoke about the historical racial inequality of women in the early 1900s, as
White women balanced familial responsibilities and later on were able to pursue professional and
educational opportunities due to the assistance of women of color who were child-nurses and
domestic help. It then added to the familial pressures on women of color, as they were expected
to devote as much time to their own families in child-rearing and domestic duties, as they were
committing to the White households that were employing them (Glenn, 1990). Currently women
of color and immigrant workers make up over half of the domestic workforce in the US at about
54%, and wages for Black women degree holders are 12.3% lower than White women with
college degrees (Allers, 2018). Remnants of institutionalized racism and sexism are still present
as women of color are paid less than their White counterparts, and expectations of women of
color to occupy roles of service and to maintain the domestic responsibilities of their families are
still in existence. Women of color such as Frida, Carmela and Lina were operating under these

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social constructs and were double-burdened with the caring of their families and their
workplaces. They were in situations to make difficult choices of either prioritizing family or their
career advancement, as PWIs and society at large did not fully support women of color and their
professional and personal identities.
Conclusion
In this study, I sought out to answer the question: how have the experiences of women of
color mid-level managers at PWIs impacted their leadership aspirations? I framed my study on
the conceptual framework that focused on the microsystem, mesosystem, exosystem and
macrosystem to see how these systems play a role in the development of participants’ leadership
aspirations. What emerged through the interviews and journal entries were four themes—
mentorship, shared leadership, connection to a larger purpose, and the role of family and well-
being. These four themes revealed that some of the participants may have been further propelled
into pursuing senior leadership roles because of their experiences at PWIs, whereas others were
challenging themselves to see how they viewed themselves as leaders and how they wanted to
impact change overall. As the conceptual framework presented in Chapter 2 showed, there were
both facilitating and inhibiting factors to women of color MLMs’ aspirations for higher
leadership roles. At the same time, what was learned in this study was that not all higher
education practitioners have the same perspectives about what the logical next steps are in terms
of leadership development. A shift in the way we think about leadership and how change comes
about in IHEs is needed.
In the following chapter, I will be discussing the implications of work cultures that do not
make space for a different way of thinking. I argue that the onus should not be primarily on
women of color to protect their emotional and physical health through creating boundaries.

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Institutions also bear responsibility on creating more welcoming environments and ensuring that
women of color can show up fully and authentically, as mothers and caregivers and as working
women with varying ambitions. In doing so, PWIs and IHEs can also impact change at a broader
level and influence perceptions of women of color and their multiple identities in a greater social
context. Women of color can and should be encouraged to pursue professional opportunities
while also caring for their families.

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CHAPTER 5: DISCUSSION
Initially, this study was born out of a curiosity on why there were so few women of color
in senior leadership positions, particularly in college and university presidencies. I aimed to
better understand how the experiences of women of color mid-level managers at PWIs informed
their leadership aspirations in order to understand facilitators and inhibitors in the pipeline to
these positions. While this study examined the varied experiences that shaped participants’
aspirations to these positions, it also opened new ways of seeing the topic. This study has pushed
me into thinking of new ways of envisioning what leadership aspirations meant to different
women of color and what that means for how we conceive of representation in higher education
leadership roles. At the onset of the study, I was focused on the leadership ladder, and made the
assumption that aspirations meant going upwards in the hierarchical structures of higher
education. Through conducting this study, I learned that women of color mid-level managers did
not necessarily see aspirations as only those that represented going up the ladder, and that the
vertical trajectory was not the only pathway that existed or that were desirable for these women.
Instead, the study broadened my understanding of what leadership aspirations can look like, and
that women of color in leadership mattered at different levels. Rather than thinking of the ladder
as being narrow with many rungs to climb, perhaps the focus should be on the rungs themselves,
and how we might widen each rung so that women of color feel empowered to lead where they
are. How do we provide more opportunities at each level (entry level, mid-level) so that women
of color can be better positioned to lead, whether that is in higher education or beyond? By
giving more opportunities for leadership and reimagining what it means to influence higher
education institutions, the hope is that women of color can be given leverage and more space to
make changes that bring about equity.

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One main takeaway from the study is the idea of the scarcity mindset versus abundance
mindset. When discussing the future of community college leadership, Alfred (2012) also
brought up the impacts of the scarcity and abundance mindsets when he argued:
Described simply, some individuals live in a world of scarcity—a world in which
resources and opportunities are limited and must be acquired and protected. The scarcity
mind-set is a zero-sum game in which one wins at the expense of another. The fear of
loss is a driving motive. Losing what one has, losing out on possibilities for getting more,
getting less than what one wanted or expected—these are the ingredients of scarcity.
Others live in a world of abundance. Their underlying view is that resources and
opportunities are unlimited. To the individual subscribing to abundance, opportunities
and challenges must be embraced and pursued. The worst thing one can do is become
attached to the status quo because possibilities abound. The abundance mentality involves
a win-win mindset—there is plenty for all, and we can achieve more together than apart.
Abundance and scarcity serve as endpoints on a continuum in which leaders may have a
variety of perspectives based on their location on the continuum (pp. 115-116).
Many participants spoke about how PWIs are driven by the scarcity mindset, in which resources
such as information and opportunities are fixed and only granted to few individuals, usually at
the top of the hierarchical structure. Yet the women of color MLMs in the study also spoke about
their desire to move towards abundance, and that there are plenty of opportunities to be shared,
particularly with fellow women of color colleagues. In this way, they argued that success can be
achieved collectively. Senior leadership positions at IHEs may be finite in number, but perhaps
the approach and focus have been misdirected. Rather than looking at these positions themselves,
the aim should be developing the women of color MLMs as individual leaders, while also re-

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envisioning the structures of PWIs and IHEs. How can we make space women of color to have
more leadership roles in a system that has historically and to the present been hierarchical?
In order to move towards to a space of possibility, we must re-envision leadership so that
senior leadership positions, such as president or chancellor, are not the only positions that matter,
the only positions that have leverage for change. Women of color MLMs must also feel
empowered to use the knowledge and leverage they have in their current roles to enact change,
regardless of the title or field.
More importantly, the responsibility for change cannot rest on the individual. The
institutions themselves must also change structurally. As stated in the conceptual framework, the
experiences of women of color MLMs are impacted by their environments at the PWI, which are
characterized by nested, complex systems. Their families (microsystem), their relationships with
work colleagues within their units (mesosystem), and the PWI culture (exosystem) all contribute
to their experiences and their motivations to pursue leadership within higher education. Key
actors within IHEs and PWIs must also recognize that the hierarchical structures continue to
uphold systems of misogyny and racism that are felt by women of color staff. These structures
must change in order to create environments that are welcoming to and supportive of historically
excluded groups such as women of color.
In this chapter, I will summarize of findings from the study and present the implications
for policy and practice. I will then discuss how the findings can help inform recommendations
for future interventions and continued research. Additionally, I will share my reflections on how
the experiences of women of color MLMs have impacted me as a researcher and what IHEs and
PWIs can learn from these valuable lessons shared by the participants.

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Summary of Findings
Experiences With Mentors Impacted How Participants Viewed Leadership
Traditional mentorship has lent opportunities to women of color who actively seek
advancing to senior leadership opportunities, such as vice president of student affairs or president
of a college. However, mentorship also provided a way to create change in participants’ current
environments by providing counsel and guidance to fellow women of color. As the conceptual
framework explained, mentors acted as facilitators towards advancement in higher education.
The participants mentioned finding mentors with friends (microsystem) as well as with work
colleagues and supervisors (mesosystem). However, what this study expands upon is the idea of
mentorship being a vehicle of change in their current environments at the PWI (mesoystem,
exosystem). By being a mentor to their colleagues, women of color felt empowered to initiate
change, rather than waiting until achieving a senior leadership role.
Mentorship was also highly valued as they understood the importance of shared
leadership and shared responsibility. The PWIs must adopt this philosophy and acknowledge that
the success of women of color in higher education should not be placed solely on the individual.
We need to question the systems that operate within PWIs and ask why women of color feel
reliant upon mentors or needing to create peer mentorship relationships to serve as support
systems. The necessity to create their own support systems may inadvertently contribute to the
cultural taxation of the few women of color leaders that are in senior leadership positions.
Because there are so few women of color leaders in visible leadership positions, participants felt
the burden to guide and support others. The participants also stated that they were often called
upon to serve in capacities to teach White colleagues on issues of race, and that contributed to
the feelings of frustration and fatigue. PWIs must recognize that the burden to mentor and guide

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others must not fall upon the women of color MLMs, but that they must create infrastructure so
that women of color can feel supported.
Leadership Was Seen as Shared, Regardless of Position or Trajectory
Connected to mentorship, the women of color participants also valued shared leadership
and encouraged the sharing of resources and information. The shared leadership model was also
a way to challenge the current structures of PWIs, in which it was hierarchical and only senior
leadership had access to information and resources. Demanding the sharing of information and
responsibilities, participants shared a rejection of this hierarchical structure as well as the scarcity
mindset that was present at PWIs. They believed resources such as information should not be
restricted and confined to certain individuals just based on positional power. Instead, participants
believed information and responsibilities should be shared among all team members, including
entry-level and mid-level employees, so that the overall institution can be successful and better
positioned to serve students. Importantly, the participants’ focus on what was best for the
students shaped their meaning making about shared leadership.
This idea of shared leadership was present for a majority of the participants, and was not
restricted to those who were committed to advancing to senior leadership positions. This shows
that regardless of their professional goals, the participants valued the ideals of shared leadership,
as they understood that in order to be effective in their roles, regardless of their position,
information and responsibility must be shared. This also further supports the community of care
that women of color have embraced, which will also be discussed later in the chapter.
Connecting to a Bigger Purpose Can Sustain Their Motivation, but is it Enough?
In terms of leadership aspirations, the participants in the study were driven by their desire
to promote social justice and equity, whether that is at their current PWI (exosystem) or change

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that impacts larger groups through policy work (macrosystem). For those who were at
institutions or departments that were conducive to or supportive of those types of changes being
made, this commitment to social justice acted as a facilitator. Some of the participants felt that
positions such as vice president and president would allow them the ability to impact greater
change. However, some participants felt that centering equity in their work should not wait until
those opportunities arise, and that social justice work should be present in their current role as
well as in any role they take on, regardless of title.
The question then becomes: is centering social justice and equity enough to sustain them
in their advancement in higher education? The findings were mixed, in which the participants
who were very determined to reach senior leadership roles were leaning on these larger purposes.
Whereas, some participants felt frustrated or fatigued at their current institution because they
encountered challenges when trying to make a purpose at their current institutions. Their
institutions were not open to change, which then acted as an inhibitor for professional growth at
that particular institution (exosystem). As a result, they sought opportunities to make change
elsewhere. Some participants also spoke about their desires to work in positions that developed
policies, showing that perhaps they were looking for opportunities to make greater social change
(macrosystem) and more sustainable impact than what they could accomplish at PWIs and IHEs
(exosystem). This also implies that in their current roles as MLMs, some participants felt that
their actions did not have a direct impact on the student populations they were serving, or that
they felt that the change they could make was not supported by the institution. How do we create
positions that are not reliant on hierarchy, ones that can still bring about change irrespective of
position?

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Societal Pressures of Being a Woman of Color and a Working Mother Shaped Aspirations
Another important theme found in the study was the societal pressures of being a woman
of color and a working mother. The participants felt multiple pressures to over-perform as
women of color professionals, while also feeling social and familial pressures to deliver on
expectations as mothers and as partners. The experiences of women of color show that their
intersecting identities as women and individuals of color are further complicated. The
participants felt the pressure to be more maternal and to take on the majority of the care-giving
responsibilities of the home, which meant foregoing professional opportunities or settling for
positions that would allow for work-life balance. Yet they also felt the pressure to keep
advancing, as they were often the only woman of color or person of color in their position at
their institutions, and felt that they needed to excel so that other historically marginalized groups
such as staff members of color can be granted future opportunities as well. This further supports
Crenshaw’s concept of intersectionality (1989), as their identity of being a woman is intertwined
with their identity as a person of color. Not only do they have the burdens of combating social
norms based on their gender, but they are also simultaneously trying to fight for racial equity
through their own professional pursuits.
Although the study primarily focused on their colleagues within their unit (mesosystem)
and the overall institutional culture (exosystem), what began to emerge is that societal influences
such as the idea that women of color MLMs must juggle or choose between their professional
aspirations or their personal well-being were also important considerations for participants. This
shows that broader social beliefs and values (macrosystem) of what defines a good
mother/caretaker or a good employee do impact women of color MLMs as they navigate through
PWIs and IHEs. The conceptual framework shows the interplay of each system: family and

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friends (microsystem), unit and department (mesosystem), PWIs (exosystem), and society as a
whole (macrosystem). The women of color participants who experienced these societal and
familial pressures often felt the dichotomy of “either/or” – either they were successful as a
professional and sacrificing personal and familial needs, or they were foregoing advancing in
leadership to devote more time to their families. On an institutional level, PWIs and IHEs must
acknowledge the push and pull that women of color, particularly working mothers, face, and
determine better ways to support them. On a broader, social level, we collectively must reject the
false dichotomy and embrace the “both/and” leadership approach, which will be further
discussed in this chapter.
Implications
The findings from the study showed that although women of color wanted to re-envision
leadership through the sharing of information and through mentorship, the PWIs as structures
hold barriers within them that have not, as of yet, allowed for this type of re-envisioning to
occur. PWIs themselves were created to provide education to an elite few and were built on the
tradition of exclusion (Arnett, 2015). What we are seeing now in present-day IHEs and PWIs are
remnants of those historical foundations, where White men are in senior leadership and are able
to drive the direction of the institution, and women of color remain in mid-level positions, given
less power to make changes. As previously discussed, we need radical reform and change from
within (de Oliveira Andreotti et al., 2015) and not rely on performative actions such as DEI job
postings or taskforces that tend not to address the underlying inequities in the system. We can
also borrow tenets from the beyond reform approach (de Oliveira Andreotti et al., 2015) as we
look outwards for new options and possibilities. This requires IHEs and society as a whole to
promote the development of women of color leaders for trajectories within and outside of higher

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education, with the understanding that leadership is not restricted to only c-suite positions (such
as president, vice president, chancellor). This will be further discussed later in this chapter, but
providing opportunities to lead in multiple ways, whether it is with community organizations and
municipal partners, will hopefully shift the thinking from leadership being restricted to senior
staff positions to leadership being accessible to women of color at multiple levels and arenas.
Culture of PWIs (Mesosystem and Exosystem)
The campus culture of PWIs were often described by the participants as hierarchical,
siloed, and not collaborative or transparent. Cabrera, Franklin, and Watson (2017) note that “the
culture of a campus is deeply rooted in the institution its historical legacy. Thus, the culture of an
institution is often difficult to change due to the history attached to an institution” (Cabrera et al.,
2017, p. 54). It is no wonder, then, that women of color experienced feelings of isolation and
frustration while navigating PWIs. This may also contribute to the unspoken tension between
what the women of color MLMs valued and what the senior leadership of the PWIs valued.
Although women of color MLMs are seen as an extension of the university and are thus expected
to carry out the policies and mission of their institution (Young, 2007 as cited in Mather, Bryan,
& Faulkner, 2009), there may be instances where they must challenge those policies to advocate
for their students and staff, as the participants expressed a strong commitment to social justice
and equity. What came through in this study was that women of color need to feel safe to share
their thoughts and opinions, even if it goes against what senior leadership and the PWI value and
stand for. True growth for the institutions as well as for the individual MLMs cannot emerge
through upkeeping the status quo, for the sake of collective harmony. PWIs and IHEs must
recognize that women of color MLMs must also feel welcomed and feel like their presence does
matter. This can be achieved through sharing of responsibilities and the redistribution of power,

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and acknowledging that women of color leaders are able to make change regardless of their title,
position or area/unit within the organization.
Social expectations (macrosystem  microsystem).
What also emerged from the study is that family and personal well-being is important to
women of color MLMs. However, they often felt that either family or personal well-being must
be sacrificed in order to excel professionally. This shows that the social expectations of women
and women of color to be effective caretakers while also being capable of their own self-
advancement, positions them in a continuous double-bind that many working women of color
encounter: not only do they have to overcome obstacles of sexism and racism in their careers, but
they have to do so while also tending to their families and personal well-being. As a society, we
must move away from the scarcity mindset, in which working women of color can only do
certain things effectively, and move towards an abundance mindset—where women of color
should be encouraged to be a mother, to have a successful career professional, and to be
supported in their varied endeavors, whatever those may be. If we can widely adopt those values,
then perhaps the dynamics within the home and within the workplace can shift along with it.
Particularly, with the onslaught of the COVID-19 pandemic, many women and women of color
left the workforce due to the pressures of caregiving for families and dependents (Roosevelt,
2021). It is even more crucial now to embrace the many identities and responsibilities of women
of color and working mothers, in order to ensure they are able to persist and succeed in their
positions without being burned out.
For the culture of PWIs and social expectations to shift, we must also examine how
current policies and practices shape the experiences of women of color MLMs at PWIs. First, we
must acknowledge that the structure and processes of PWIs greatly contribute to the feelings of

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“imposter syndrome” that many women of color experience. For instance, the hiring practices
and the onboarding procedures need to ensure that women of color are fully supported from
selection all the way through to their first weeks on the job. Faculty and staff of color have
reported experiencing microaggressions, stereotype threats and feelings of imposter syndrome as
new scholars or staff members (Edwards, 2019; Desai, 2019). Yet what “imposter syndrome”
implies is that the issue lies on the individual woman of color, and not on the overall system
(Tulshyan & Burey, 2021). Responsibility must be taken up by institutions and IHEs must also
ensure that women of color MLMs are able to be successful in their roles. The committees and
taskforces on employee hiring and development should also be reexamined in order to avoid
regurgitating practices that maintain the status quo (White male leadership). With regards to
policy, it is clear that women of color still do not feel supported to pursue professional goals
while simultaneously raising a family. IHEs need to revisit the policies at the institutional level
and broader systemic level, such as maternity and paternity leave, and how the implementation
of these policies at PWIs continue to push women of color MLMs to the margins.
Recommendations
The findings in my study call for a “both/and” approach: IHEs need to adopt values from
both the radical reform approach and beyond reform approach. The conceptual framework used
in this study shows that the environment very much impacts the individual. Therefore, the PWI
and the units within the institution must be reformed in order to create settings that women of
color MLMs feel like they belong and that they are welcome to be their authentic selves. PWIs
and IHEs must also facilitate their professional growth by encouraging multiple ways of leading
that branch outside the status quo. The radical reform approach calls for reform from within the
institution, and the beyond reform approach states that reform requires new options. This may

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seem contradictory, but in line with abundance mindset, institutional leaders must embrace all
options – create reform within current institutional structures while also being open to new ways
of being. Radical reform can serve to advance short-term changes while the imagining of
possibilities in the beyond reform spaces can simultaneously support long term practice change.
Moving towards a lateral, shared leadership model (mesosystem, exosystem).
PWIs have hierarchical structures and cultures that are not transparent. The two may go
hand in hand, in which resource-sharing is frowned upon, and only an elite few have access to
information. The higher one goes up the ladder and more knowledge they accrue, the more
inaccessible they become to those working beneath them (including the students the institutions
are meant to serve). As a result, women of color MLMs desired to change this culture by moving
towards a shared leadership model in which each individual has access to the same information.
In order to achieve this, institutions must start by removing siloes and barriers to communication.
Oftentimes IHEs and PWIs are siloed, with little to no direction to create relationships across
units. Rather than placing the responsibility and added burden on women of color MLMs to
develop bridges, the institutions should remove those barriers and encourage cross-collaborations
across units. This, then, facilitates communication and encourages a culture of openness, rather
than being closed and secretive. This is also a first step towards shifting to a culture of
transparency.
IHEs and PWIs should also share authority with regards to the development of significant
policies and include women of color staff members in the decision-making processes of the
institution. For instance, PWIs can develop committees and taskforces that consist of students,
faculty, and staff members from each division and unit, from all levels such as entry-level, mid-
level, and senior level positions. These committees and taskforces would then drive the decision-

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making processes of the institution, and can develop outcomes for the IHE/PWI that reflect
radical reform. The involvement in committees and taskforces should not be additional burden to
the staff members, and instead should be included in their job descriptions. When leadership is
shared, the individuals involved (students, staff, faculty) should not feel like it is in addition to
the work but is an integral part of the work. This would then provide an avenue for women of
color from different levels to feel empowered while also feeling included and that their input
matters to the functioning of the organization.
While women of color MLMs have been able to create strong mentoring relationships
within and outside PWIs, I would strongly recommend that IHEs and PWIs create
institutionalized systems of mentorship or provide resources and incentives for those who wish
to develop their own mentorship programs. Beyond the official supervisor/supervisee
relationship, mentoring can occur across units and even across institutions. PWIs should actively
look into ways in which these relationships can be fostered and sustained, so that women of color
do not need to search for fellow women of color for support. These could be through multiple
ways, such as creating a mission statement for staff and faculty that has mentorship as one of the
core values. Institutional leaders can also dedicate financial resources to mentorship through
offering professional development events or provide funding to currently existing staff
organizations to promote mentorship among women of color. The efforts that women of color
put forth in mentoring each other can also be recognized through annual performance
evaluations. With the institution placing value on the work that they do as mentors, this would
hopefully prevent women of color leaders feeling the additional cultural taxation.

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Creating Infrastructure That Supports Women of Color Staff
In line with sharing responsibility in the decision-making processes, I recommend that
IHEs and PWIs review and update their infrastructure to be more inclusive and supportive of
women of color staff members. Revisiting the organizational chart to determine if one person is
required to be at the top, or whether it can be re-envisioned to encompass multiple leaders. For
instance, student affairs can be overseen by a group of individuals, versus one vice president of
student affairs. Leadership in IHEs can contemplate ways to dismantle the hierarchical structure.
Creating a more inclusive and welcoming environment may also mean providing
resources at each level: for new, incoming professionals, for mid-level management staff, and for
senior level women of color staff. This would require onboarding processes, professional
development and for senior leadership to be in concert with each other, as each component helps
women of color staff members at each level. This would then involve creating departments that
focus their efforts towards the advancement of women of color. These departments can reside in
human resources and staff development as well as in diversity, equity and inclusion departments.
In addition to professional development, additional resources such as mental health resources
should also be devoted to women of color staff as they encounter challenges within IHEs and
PWIs. This would all contribute to the culture of care, which will also be discussed later in this
chapter.
Encourage New and Multiple Ways of Leading
In order for institutions to change from within, senior leadership must also embrace the
idea that leadership in practice should be conceived of in different ways, not just traditional
views of leadership. Failure to recognize new and different ways of leading has also led to
women of color MLMs being overlooked for opportunities. One recommendation is to recognize

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and acknowledge the work of women of color MLMs and share their leadership contributions
widely with the community. Representation of women of color is not just important in senior
leadership roles. Students and entry-level staff must also see women of color leaders being
represented in different areas and at different levels of the institution. Oftentimes achievements
such as being an outstanding mentor/advisor or excellence in service in non-profit or
professional organizations go unnoticed. But these achievements must be highlighted and
recognized widely, as a way to show the greater community that leadership comes in many
forms. By encouraging different types of leadership, it can also shift the broader institutional and
social expectations of what a leader does. Individuals, such as women of color MLMs, may not
even be considered for leadership opportunities because they do not “fit” the image of a
traditional leader—someone who is assertive and takes over the direction of the team. Hill
(2008) has labelled this as “stylistic” limitations, in which the governing powers decide who fits
the leader prototype based on their personality attributes (Hill, 2008 as cited in Alfred, 2012). By
sharing widely the many accomplishments of women of color MLM leaders within the PWI
(such as supporting students and mentoring colleagues) and outside the PWI (such as
contributions to outside organizations and conference involvements), the hope is to push forward
multiple and varying images of leadership. The goal is to shift the idea of what a leader should
look like (deficit, scarcity mindset), and more towards a place of possibility on what a leader
could look like in its various forms (abundance mindset).
Units, departments, and PWIs should encourage women of color MLMs to show up
authentically and boldly. Women of color should feel encouraged to bring their authentic selves,
which includes their identities as a woman, a person of color, a mother, a caretaker, and a whole
person who deserves to prioritize their well-being over their jobs. Women of color should feel

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safe and supported when challenging the status quo, and not have the fear of being overlooked or
passed over for opportunities, or worse yet, being punished for having an unpopular opinion.
Institutions must recognize that being challenged can also be an opportunity to push the overall
organization to learn and grow.
Lastly, I would also recommend that IHEs and PWIs provide opportunities to lead within
and outside higher education. It sounds antithetical to provide opportunities to lead outside
higher education, but ultimately it will serve the institution as it pushes women of color to think
beyond themselves and beyond the PWI. The goal of IHE is to prepare students to be thought
leaders and change agents who will make an impact on society. Similarly, the staff of the
institution should also be encouraged to develop these skills through working on policy,
collaborating with organizations and partners outside of higher education, and bringing those
skills back to the institution. By regurgitating the status quo, the institution and the community as
a whole will not grow and will remain stagnant. As mentioned earlier, both a radical reform and
beyond reform approach are needed for substantial structural change to IHEs. By encouraging
the development of women of color leaders, we are looking at beyond reform (not just reforming
the institution), but we collectively are imagining new ways for leadership and creating options
that are not restricted to higher education.
Create a Culture of Community Care
The findings from the study place a large emphasis on the idea of the community. We are
all part of a bigger whole, and our failure to see that will only lead to our collective demise. The
participants exhibited this focus on community care through their discussions about mentorship,
their value of shared leadership, and awareness of their actions being connected to a larger
purpose. Especially due to the COVID-19 pandemic, it is even more crucial to emphasize a

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culture of genuine care among the larger community. PWIs must embrace the idea of community
care and ensure that staff, particularly women of color MLMs, feel supported. This can be seen
in the implementation of policies on sick leave and paternity/maternity leave, as well as in their
mission statements and messaging from the university.
In response to the ongoing racial discrimination and inequities, IHEs must also develop
policies in which staff and faculty of color feel included rather than excluded. Rather than adding
to their burdens, senior leaders should provide resources to alleviate the stresses that accompany
cultural taxation, such as prioritizing Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) mental
health resources. Most importantly, PWIs cannot be reactionary but instead proactive with their
commitment to dismantling White supremacy in higher education, and that is through addressing
systems within their institution that perpetuate Whiteness, such as hiring and promotion
practices, administrative structures, types of services provided, and amount of available funding.
Radical reform calls for changes within the institution, and that may look like transparent hiring
and promotion practices, prioritizing of services and resources to historically marginalized
faculty and staff members, and allocation of funding for professional development for women of
color staff members.
Future Research
In this study, I focused mainly on the participants’ experiences at the PWIs (mesosystem
and exosystem) and how those experiences shaped their leadership aspirations. Future research
could examine the effects of experiences beyond PWIs and delve deeper into how experiences
within the microsystem and macrosystem also play a part in shaping their leadership aspirations.
Relationships within their families and friend circles (microsystem) as well as participants’
reflections on how they grew up helped shape their views on leadership, and how they bring

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those experiences into their work. Additional studies that bring in Yosso’s community cultural
wealth framework (2005) and how women of color MLMs incorporate mainly the familial and
social capital would also help strengthen the findings on how family plays a significant part in
the development of women of color leaders.
Journal-writing was one method of data collection in my study. However, I would also
recommend journal entries as another way to track the personal narratives of women of color,
particularly as it relates to their families, as women of color may be able to share richer stories
through journaling. This can be a longitudinal study and can be done over a longer course of
time, to further examine the impact of their familial and personal relationships on their
professional trajectory.
In addition to exploring the family space (microsystem), future research could also
examine women of color and their creation of new spaces outside of home (microsystem), office
or department (mesosystem), and college or university (exosystem). Some participants noted that
they, along with like-minded colleagues, created spaces outside of the institution to support each
other. It would be interesting to see how women of color create these spaces that may fall in
between their personal, home lives and their professional work lives (across systems). Future
studies on how women of color make meaning out of and how they utilize these spaces to further
develop themselves could be a valuable addition to the literature on women of color leaders in
higher education.
I would also suggest additional studies that are focused on staff of color at different types
of institutions, particularly IHEs that have devoted resources and efforts on the advancement of
staff of color. This also goes in line with the abundance mindset, and seeing which institutions
are effectively shifting from a scarcity to abundance mindset and culture. Some models to follow

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may be historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs) and Hispanic-serving institutions
(HSIs) to see if they are also committing to the advancement of the staff of color, particularly
women of color staff, at their institutions.
Although there have been studies on staff members who have left the field of student
affairs in higher education, additional studies should be conducted particularly on women of
color staff members who have left higher education in pursuit of other leadership opportunities.
This may further support the finding from this study that women of color leaders seek to make a
change in multiple ways, and that it is not restricted to type of role in higher education. These
studies can focus on similar themes such as mentorship, shared leadership and familial/personal
obligations, and if these factors are present in their careers outside of higher education, or if they
manifest in different ways due to the different environments.
Conclusion
As it relates to aspirations for senior leadership, the themes from the study showed that
participants put a strong emphasis on collective responsibility: sharing of resources, and
mentoring and building each other up. The women of color participants also found agency and
ability to create change through these practices of sharing and uplifting each other. With great
collective responsibility, comes great collective power. If we are to move more towards
abundance mindset versus scarcity mindset, the structures of PWI (top-down hierarchy, select
access to information) that led to competition among individuals need to be questioned and
changed. The women of color participants in this study resisted these ideologies, did not fit into
the mold of upwardly mobile leadership approaches, and were creating new options for
themselves. In resisting and complicating aspirations for leadership, participants were shifting

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the former ways of thinking of how leadership has been viewed while also going outside the
confines of traditional pathways that are dictated by White male norms.
Whether that is through achieving senior leadership to ultimately impact change in higher
education, or creating change from their current positions and changing systems from within, the
goal remained the same: to change what has been done and to make it a better place for future
generations of women of color. We need change agents at all levels and within all systems, and
we as a larger society must embrace that leadership does not always look like being the president
of a college. Being a woman of color leader may look like sharing strategies with fellow women
of color colleagues, being a working mother who decides to pursue a doctoral degree, or a
working mother who decides to maintain work-life boundaries. The participants of the study
showed that there is not a one-size-fits-all approach to leadership, because the experiences of
women of color MLMs at PWIs are varied and complex. In spite of structures within PWIs that
are sometimes unwelcoming and discouraging to the growth women of color MLMs, the
participants were still able to find ways to build community and flourish. At the same time, more
work is necessary to reimagine institutions that fully embrace women of color in whatever
positions they wish to occupy.
As Grace Lee Boggs once stated, “the only way to survive is by taking care of each
other.” I was inspired to pursue the topic of women of color leaders within higher education,
because I myself identify as a Filipina-American woman staff member in a PWI. I have greatly
benefited from the mentorship and guidance by women of color, whether they served as
traditional mentors or as peer mentors. I understood firsthand the immense value of taking care
of each other as they pushed me to pursue opportunities, and through their guidance I have felt
more empowered in finding my voice. The women of color participants in this study also

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believed that taking care of each other is a way to persist at PWIs, and that through this
caretaking, they can nurture each other’s aspirations, whatever those may be, while also honoring
their multiple identities as women of color. The experiences shared by the participants give me
great hope that women of color leaders at all levels will continue to change and shape what
leadership looks like, and that future women of color leaders will not be confined to one
definition, but will be encouraged to create their own.

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Appendix A
Recruitment Flyer for Participants

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if

Appendix B
Dissertation Recruitment Screener Online Survey

181

182

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Appendix C
Recruitment Email sent out to survey respondents

Dear colleague,

I hope you are well, staying safe and healthy, and keeping up positive spirits during this time.

Thank you again for completing the survey and for agreeing to be contacted for an interview to
talk about your experiences as a womxn of color mid-level manager at a predominantly White
institution (PWI). I am reaching out as I am planning to schedule the interviews (about 60 min.
in length) in the coming weeks.

I have attached the information sheet with more details regarding the study. If you are interested
in participating, please reply with the following information:

Name:
Choose your top 3 time choices below. Please rank them in terms of preference (1 being the most
preferred, 3 being the least):

Wed., Dec. 9
1:30 pm – 2:30 pm PST
3:30 pm 4:30 pm PST

Thu., Dec. 10
9 am – 10 am PST
12 pm – 1 pm PST
1:30 pm – 2:30 pm PST
3 pm – 4 pm PST

I will reach out if more times are needed. I will then send a separate email with a confirmation as
well as the zoom link.

Thank you again for your assistance and support. Please let me know if you have any questions.
Take care and I look forward to connecting with you soon!

Best,

Julienne Jose-Chen
Pronouns: she/her/hers

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Appendix D
Information Sheet Distributed to Participants
INFORMATION SHEET FOR EXEMPT RESEARCH

STUDY TITLE: Women of Color Administrators in Mid-level Management and their
Meaning-Making Processes at Predominantly White Institutions

PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATOR: Julienne Jose-Chen

FACULTY ADVISOR: Artineh Samkian, PhD

You are invited to participate in a research study. Your participation is voluntary. This
document explains information about this study. Please ask questions about anything
that is unclear to you.

PURPOSE
The purpose of this study is to focus on the experiences of womxn of color mid-level
managers at predominantly White institutions (PWIs) and how these experiences inform
their pursuit of leadership opportunities through an exploration of how they make
meaning of their identities as leaders. I hope to learn more about your experiences and
the meaning-making processes that inform or influence your decisions to pursue
advanced leadership roles. You are invited as a possible participant because you
identify as a womxn of color in a mid-level management position currently employed at
a predominantly White or historically White institutions.

PARTICIPANT INVOLVEMENT
Participants will be asked to participate in one 60-90 minute interview with the possibility
of a short follow-up interview. The interviews will be conducted online through Zoom,
and the audio will be recorded and transcribed, with your permission. Participants will
also be asked to engage in journaling activities and will journal once a month over a
period of 3-4 months following the initial interview. Participants can choose to decline in
answering any questions during the interview or during the journaling period. At any
point, participants can also choose to stop their participation.

If you decide to take part, you will be asked for what dates and times are most
convenient for you for the initial interview. You will then receive additional instructions
on how to meet online on Zoom for the initial interview. Following the interview, you will
also receive additional instructions on the journaling activities. You will receive the
journal prompts in advance, and can write in a Microsoft word document that you can
send back to me.

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PAYMENT/COMPENSATION FOR PARTICIPATION
You will receive a $15 Amazon electronic gift card for your participation. This will be
sent to you upon completion of the interviews and journaling activities.

CONFIDENTIALITY
The members of the research team, and the University of Southern California
Institutional Review Board (IRB) may access the data. The IRB reviews and monitors
research studies to protect the rights and welfare of research subjects.

When the results of the research are published or discussed in conferences, no
identifiable information will be used.

Pseudonyms will be used for all identifying information during the interviews and
journaling activities to ensure confidentiality. Data will be stored in a protected computer
drive. Once the audio transcriptions have been completed, participants will be able to
view the transcripts to ensure accuracy.

INVESTIGATOR CONTACT INFORMATION
If you have any questions about this study, please contact Julienne Jose-Chen at
juliennj@usc.edu.

IRB CONTACT INFORMATION
If you have any questions about your rights as a research participant, please contact the
University of Southern California Institutional Review Board at (323) 442-0114 or email
irb@usc.edu.

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Appendix E
Interview Protocol
Introduction:
Thank you again for agreeing to participate in my study. This study will be focusing on the
experiences and leadership aspirations of women of color in mid-level management positions at
predominantly White institutions (PWIs). The interview will take about 60-90 minutes, and the
audio will be recorded and transcribed with your permission. The recording will not be shared
with anyone outside the research team and is intended to ensure I capture your perspectives
accurately. I will also be taking notes during the interview in addition to the recording. I will be
reaching out at a later time to share the updated transcript with you to ensure accuracy. I will also
be using pseudonyms in place of any identifiers to ensure your confidentiality.
Given COVID-19 and work-from-home circumstances, I understand that there may be
things to consider such as wi-fi connections and family/work-related interruptions. So please let
me know if you’d like me to pause at any point. If at any point, you wish to opt out of the
interview or decline answering any of the questions, you can do that. Please let me know if you
have any questions or concerns before we proceed.
First off, you have answered these questions for the screener. can you answer the following?

 Your name
 Your preferred pronouns
 The pseudonym you wish to use (can be asked before recording)
 Do you identify as a womxn of color? If yes, please state your race and/or ethnicity.
 Do you work at a predominantly White institution or historically White institution?
 If yes, what type of institution? Public, private? Large/small? Additional descriptors?
 What is your current position? How long have you held this position?
 Do you currently supervise employees? How many?
 What is the title of your direct supervisor(s)?
 How long have you worked in higher education/student affairs?

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Interview questions Systems/Concept
from CF
Facilitators/Inhibitors
Introduction
1. To start off could you tell me a little bit
about yourself and about your
professional journey?
(Probes: How did you decide to pursue a
higher education administration position?
What were some experiences or factors
that led to different transitions along the
way?)
Meaning-
making
NA – to start the
interview off (get a
sense of how they
started in higher
education)
Woman of Color and Leadership Identity
2. First, I’d like to ask you about your
definition of a leader. If you were to
describe a leader to me, what would you
say? (Probes: what makes a leader a good
leader? What makes someone not a good
leader?)
3. How did you develop this definition of a
leader? Describe an experience that
helped you derive this definition of a
leader.
4. How do you see yourself fitting within
that definition?
(Probes: how did you see yourself as a
leader 5 years ago? Compared to present
day?)
5. Tell me about a time when you felt like
the only woman of color in the
workplace. (Probes: who was there?
What was the context of the interaction?
How did you feel? How were your
contributions overlooked, if at all? How
were seen as a representative of all
women of color, if at all?)
6. Some people say that unless women of
color have role models who are also
women of color, they don’t see a place
for them in the leadership ranks. What
are your thoughts? Is this the case at your
current institution?
7. If not answered in #5: Tell me about a
time when you experienced something at
work that demonstrates your gender
being salient.
Microsystem,
Mesosystem,
Leadership
Identity
Development,
Meaning-
Making,
Intersectionality
 Facilitators:
traditional and non-
traditional
mentorship
 Inhibitors: feeling
of isolation,
hypervisibility

188

8. If not answered in #5: Tell me about a
time when you experienced something at
work that demonstrates your race being
salient.
9. Tell me about a time when your gender
or race was more salient than the other at
current institution?

Microsystem
First, I’d like to talk about your relationships
with people in your non-professional circles.
10. How do you define mentorship?
11. Who would you identify as a mentor in
your non-professional circles, such as
family and friends? Is there anyone else
you’d like to tell me about who served as
a mentor in your non-professional
circles? What actions demonstrate that
this person is a mentor?
12. Who would you identify as mentors in
organizations outside of your profession?
To clarify non-work related organizations
such as NASPA, church groups, non-
profit groups. What actions demonstrate
that this person is a mentor?
13. (If not answered in previous questions):
Share an example of a time when one of
your mentors (non-professional circles)
influenced your personal growth?
14. Can you share how these mentorships
were formed? What were driving
motivators to find mentors outside of
your professional circles?
Microsystem  Facilitators: non-
traditional
mentorship

Mesosystem
Now I want to switch to the workplace/your
PWI.
15. If not answered at the beginning: How
did you come to work in your current
role?
16. Please describe your first few weeks in
your current role. How did you feel being
a part of your office/unit? How did you
feel being a part of your institution?
17. What things were surprising?
18. What things were disappointing?
19. What things were reassuring?
Mesosytem,  Facilitator:
traditional
mentorship (if
mentions
supervisor) or
non-traditional
mentorship
(colleagues)
 Inhibitor: lack of
support,
inequitable
hiring/promotion

189

20. Tell me about a person in your
professional circle that you would you
identify as a mentor. What makes them a
mentor? What actions demonstrate that
this person is a mentor?
21. How has this mentor influenced your
personal growth, if at all? Can you share
an example?
22. Share a time where you felt you had been
treated differently for being a woman of
color in your unit/department?
23. Share a time when you had a positive
experience as a woman of color in terms
of promotion or hiring?
24. Share a time when you had a negative
experience as a woman of color in terms
of promotion or hiring?
25. How has your relationship with your
supervisor (within your workplace) shape
your leadership aspirations?
(Probing questions: did you receive
opportunities for informal leadership? Or
were there instances that you received
verbal support for being a leader, for
example?)
26. How has your relationship with your
colleagues (within your workplace) shape
your leadership aspirations?
(Probing questions: In what ways did
your relationship with your supervisor
allowed for opportunities to seek
assistance if needed? Did you feel you
received support from your supervisor to
pursue leadership opportunities?)

practices,
microagressions
Exosystem - PWI
27. How do you see the PWI’s climate
differently, being a woman of color
administrator?
28. Being at a PWI, can you share an
experience that impacted you as a woman
of color?
29. Describe the onboarding you experienced
at your PWI. Did you feel supported
Mesosytem,
Exosystem
Intersectionality
 Facilitator:
institutional
commitment to
diversity,
orientation,
recruitment
 Inhibitor: lack of
institutional
support,
microagressions

190

during the process? Or were there areas
that needed improvement?
30. How does your organization promote
women of color, if at all? Like #31 below
31. Pre-hiring freezes and budget cuts: how
did or does your organization encourage
advancement/promotion among women
of color, if at all?
32. When thinking about women of color
succeeding at your institution what are
some things you feel would be necessary
in order to facilitate their growth?
33. What has your institution done well as it
relates to the growth of women of color
staff members?
34. Forward facing: When thinking about
women of color succeeding at any PWI,
what are some things you feel would be
necessary in order to facilitate their
growth? Please share thoughts and base it
off your own experiences if possible.

Aspirations
In this section, I would like to ask about your
career aspirations.

35. Please feel free to take a moment for this
next question: If there were no barriers in
your way and you could have it
completely your way, where do you see
yourself in 5-10 years?
Probing: This is a shift from the previous
question, so I would challenge you to
think more personally (your own
personal journey) versus broadly (for
womxn of color altogether).
36. Considering the factors of reality, where
do you see yourself in 5-10 years, if
different?
37. What (professional) experiences do you
think shaped these aspirations? (ask
about ideal vs. real separately if different
above). Probes: What experiences have
you had that you believe limit your
aspirations? What experiences have you
Mesosytem,
Exosystem
 Facilitators:
institutional
commitment to
diversity, more
women of color
leaders
represented
 Inhibitors: lack
of institutional
commitment to
diversity, lack of
women of color
leaders being
represented

191

had that you believe widen your
aspirations?
38. What do you foresee to be facilitating
factors that will help you achieve these
goals, if any?
Probing: again thinking more personal in
addition to broader factors (what in your
immediate environments/contexts)
39. What do you foresee to be barriers that
will inhibit you from achieving these
goals, if any?
40. What does your organization currently do
that you think will support you as a
woman of color in achieving your goals,
if anything?
41. What are some things you’d like your
organization to implement to support you
as a woman of color in achieving your
goals, if anything?
42. Generally speaking, what can support all
women of color to advance in the higher
education context?
Conclusion
43. Are there any questions I haven’t asked
or is there anything you would like to
add?

Conclusion:
Thank you again for answering the interview questions. I appreciate you taking the time to speak
with me, and I value the responses you provided. If I have any questions to clarify or follow up,
would you mind if I emailed you or set up a short follow up interview?
As mentioned earlier, I will be reaching out at a later time to share the updated transcript with
you to ensure accuracy. I will also be using pseudonyms in place of any identifiers. I will also be
contacting you about the logistics of the journaling activities. This will involve a prompt that you
can reflect upon each month. I will send instructions and additional details about that. As part of
your participation in the study (interview and journaling), you will be receiving a gift card via

192

email. If you have any questions at all, please feel free to contact me at any time at
juliennj@usc.edu. Thank you again.

193

Appendix F
Journal Prompts
Thank you again for participating in the journaling activity. As mentioned during our check-in
call, participants will engage in journal writing once a month over the course of four months. The
prompts have been provided here in advance so that you can take some time to review and reflect
before writing. Similar to the interviews, if there is a journal prompt that you do not feel
comfortable responding to, you may opt out of that particular journaling exercise for that month
or write a different entry related to the topic of your experiences in higher educational leadership.

You can complete the journaling exercise through a variety of ways:
1. Writing in an electronic journal (Microsoft Word, Notepad, Google doc) – please email
me the journal entry within one week. For example, if the first journal prompt is sent to
you on Oct. 1, please submit the entry by Oct. 8 if possible.
2. Voice recording (Voice Memo app) – for the sake of convenience, a voice recording can
constitute as a journal entry. Please send me the recording file within one week (see
above).
3. Writing in a hard-copy journal – participants may feel more comfortable writing in a
hard-copy journal. In this case, please scan and email me the pdf files within one week
(see #1).

Given everyone’s schedule, it is understandable that submitting within these timelines may not
always be possible. But if you need to submit at a later time, or would prefer to check in during
an online meeting in place of journaling (about 30 minutes in length), then we can arrange that as
well.

The journaling activity should take about 30 minutes total for each prompt. Please try to write at
least one or two pages in length for each journal prompt. This is more of a personalized account
of your experience, so there is no format that each prompt response needs to follow. However, if
an example would be helpful, please let me know and I can provide one upon request.

At any time, please feel free to contact me at juliennj@usc.edu if you have any questions. Thank
you again for your participation.

Journal prompts Systems/CF concept
First journal prompt (month 1):

Please share a recent experience at your workplace in which you
felt your identity as a womxn of color was salient. In these
experiences, did one identity feel more visible than the other?

For this prompt, please consider the following guiding questions to
help you deepen each response:
Intersectionality

194

 Was this a good experience? A bad one? both?
 Who was present at those experiences? What were their
positionalities?
 How did who they were shape how you experienced this
event?
 How do you know your identity was salient? What did
people say or do?

Second journal prompt (month 2):

Share a recent story in the last month when you felt supported in
your role, either by colleagues or by a mentor (supervisor, mentor
from outside the institution, etc.).

For this prompt, please consider the following guiding questions to
help you deepen each response:
 What was the context of the experience?
 Who was present at those experiences? What were their
positionalities?
 How did who they were shape how you experienced this
event?
 What type of support did they provide?
 How does this support inform your leadership aspirations, if
at all?
 How was this experience different from another time when
you didn’t feel supported by someone?
Microsystem, Mesosystem
Third journal prompt (month 3):

In the past month, please share an experience when you felt your
identity as a womxn of color leader shaped how others interacted
with you or the outcome of a situation. This can be a positive or
negative experience, or both. This can also be an experience in
which those identities were deliberately or inadvertently
referenced.

For this prompt, please consider the following guiding questions to
help you deepen each response:
 What was the context of this experience?
 Who was present? Who within your professional space did
you seek out support from, if at all?
 How does this experience inform your view of your unit?
Your institution?
 How has your identities as a womxn of color played into
your leadership journey?
Mesosytem, Exosystem

195

 How does this experience inform your leadership
aspirations (or lack thereof)?

Fourth journal prompt (month 4):

Over the past 3-4 months, reflect on your role and your position at
your current institution. How have your experiences in this role at
this institution shaped your ideas about leadership?

For this prompt, please consider the following guiding questions to
help you deepen each response:
 How has the concept of leadership changed from before you
started journaling (about 3-4 months ago)? What is different
now? Any realizations or reflections during this period?
 How did you see yourself as a leader before you started at
this institution? How has it changed now?
 How has your identities as a womxn of color played into
your leadership journey?
 How have your experiences in this institution informed your
leadership aspirations (or lack thereof)?
Mesosytem, Exosystem

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Appendix G
Code Book
Mentorship and Community Networks
Help with Professional Development
Code Description Number of
instances/
participants

Example
Professional and
Personal Support
Mentorship as a way to
provide professional
(academic, job-related)
support as well as
personal (health-related)
support
10 “So I define mentorship, as
someone who supports your
development personally and
professionally…there’s also
different types like your mentor
who you can talk to like
professionally, and then
someone who can you like be
emotional with and vent to, so I
was also told to, like, make sure
to define that or kind of think
about that when forming
mentorships” - Christine
Career Development Mentors helping
mentees develop
themselves in their
careers and have them
thinking about the next
step professionally.
10 “I've wondered like ‘should I be
moving up? Like you know,
because our campuses are
relational like, Do I have the
right relationships built to be
able to move up?’ And so I was
getting in my, my last position. I
was a senior coordinator and had
a lot of responsibility. Like, I, I,
in my, I think my previous boss
would tell you that I was
probably functioning at assistant
director level without the title.
But [she] kept like just nudging
me and saying like, ‘what's next
for you?’…And she would just
always nudge me in our one on
one meetings, not every meeting
but in many of them.” - Mimi
Career Development:
Develop Professional
Identity
Mentors helping guide
mentees not necessarily
in next steps (action
steps) towards the next
8 “This gesture from Dr. D was
meaningful because she knows
that I am trying to be more
intentional in the work that I do

197

position, but providing
guidance that will help
further hone their
identity as a
leader/professional.
and in learning more about my
own identities. She sees the
potential in me already as a
leader and recognizes that LDI
would be a great opportunity to
further my leadership skills and
knowledge of how to be a strong
ally for my community. Dr. D is
an expert in multicultural
psychology, Asian American
mental health, and feminism,
and women’s issues.” - Christine
Empowering, Seeing
you outside of yourself
Mentors seeing you
beyond yourself and
bringing out the best
qualities in you.
7 “Mentorship is a relationship in
which...it's a reciprocal
relationship. Where the mentor
provides support and guidance
for more introspection for the
for them for the person is being
mentored. and really just kind of
just put up a mirror for that
person. And provides an
opportunity to to to really just
like I said earlier, just see the
hope that they see in them and
have and help the person see it
in themselves.” - Dolores
Authentic, Real
Mentorship
Mentorship was not only
authentic and real but
also allowed participants
to be authentic/real, safe
spaces.
9 “ I think, Okay, well one I think
being that token Hispanic. I
think a key part of that
mentorship is finding someone
that sees you as who you are and
without seeing you as that token.
A place where for all my
mentors, I believe that they have
allowed me to be vulnerable
without judging me as on my
position or without expecting
me to know more, they leave me
space for vulnerability and space
for growth, because I think
being a token. I think I struggle
a lot with perfectionism. So it
takes a lot out of me to say, I
don't know, or just say I don't
know what to do next. Even
though I feel that way. It takes a

198

lot out of me to say to verbalize
that and I need that safe space. I
think within all those mentors is
that space for vulnerability,
Space to be yourself without
judgment and for them to
understand that you're going to
have” - Sonya
Mentorship Through
Prof Organizations,
involvements
Mentoring relationships
that were developed
through professional
organizations or outside
involvements.
7 “I have been an active member
of the National Association
since 2016. I started as a
Graduate Student
Representative, and the women
in this organization have been
very welcoming and supportive
that I consider Section A as one
of my professional homes. Last
month, I received an email from
one of the core members of
Section A, Dr. D,
recommending me to apply for
the 2021 Leadership
Development Institute (LDI) for
the Council as a representative
of the Division. Although I am a
member of Division, I am not as
active as I am with Division. My
chance of being selected is
probably very slim, but it meant
a lot to me that she thought of
me for the fellowship. She
encouraged me to try and even
wrote a letter of
recommendation on my behalf.
It was my first time applying for
any type of fellowship.” -
Christine
Formal mentorship
through supervisors:
similar work
philosophy; Trust and
support from
supervisors
Formal mentorship as
defined by mentorship
provided by current
and/or former
supervisors.
13 “This situation made me feel
like my boss really heard the
impact that comment had on
people, especially marginalized
folks in the room, and didn’t
brush it aside. The quick
response from higher ups made
me feel validated in bringing the
concern up to them. I will note,

199

the people handling the situation
identify as women of color and
that may have something to do
with the quick response. I really
appreciated how the situation
was handled and I hope that
when someone brings issues
such as these to me, I can
respond as quickly and
thoughtfully as these women
did.” - Frida
Formal mentorship
through supervisors:
lack of support
Participants described
feeling lack of support
from their supervisors.
6 “Well, then I had like a follow
up meeting with my supervisor.
And again, there's a couple of
people of color in that meeting.
And his response was like,
Joyce*, I don't think you should
have asked that question.
Because it's above your
paygrade. And I was like, Oh, so
this has to do with economics?
Like, I shouldn't ask a question,
because the people who make
the decision get paid more than
me. Great. So when do people
actually get held accountable for
making decisions? And how do
you make decisions and, you
know, all these other things, and
I was just like, so frustrated,
because I felt like I guess it was
more about my age, or how
much I got paid. Or me just
being a woman, because the
people who were answering
were White men. So I felt like it
was a bad experience. The
person who said it was above
my pay grade was the Black
man. And he was just like, I
don't want to cause any trouble.”
- Joyce
Mentorship as a
responsibility:
propelling the field
forward
Mentorship was a way
to move the field
forward, and their
mentors saw their
7 “And I actually, because of her,
and she didn't even know me.
She just, I think maybe she just
appreciated that I reached out

200

pouring in as a way to
also ensure that the field
continues to
progress/advance.
but she started introducing me to
the different members of the of
the conference. So I ended up
having a bigger role than,
because I thought I was just
gonna like pass out name tags,
but ended up like helping with
the scholarships committee,
which was really good. Like,
you know, I now have
experience, but it was actually,
but when I got to know her, she
actually said she likes it when
she said ‘the young ones,’ they
like, the young ones, Or the new
ones volunteer because it's their
way to kind of pass on their
responsibilities and hopefully
somebody who will continue the
division. So I guess that's why
she kind of just did that and she
said she does that to everyone
who she connects with but then
it's really up to that person to see
how much of that they want to
take on. Yeah. So from there,
she's been really supportive” -
Christine
Mentorship as Act of Resistance – Advocacy for fellow WoC
Advocacy among
fellow WoC re: hiring,
salary
Women of color
advocating for each
other, particularly during
hiring processes or
salary negotiations.
5 “People that you can develop
real relationships to talk about
things like salaries, negotiations,
that stuff that is really helpful. or
like how do you decide to like
normalize that? so even think
about, like, the most recent
person who who has been a
manager and like we've gotten
along really well so far. She's
been there for a few months
now. And I think at one point, I
was just like, I just like straight
up asked, like, ‘oh, what's your
salary?’ and she was like,
‘what?’ and I was like, ‘This is
my salary.’ Like I do, I have a

201

senior manager title versus a
manager. So I knew, And so she
told me her salary. And I was
like ‘Oh Okay, that's good. They
didn't like low ball you.’ She's
like, ‘What do you mean?’ and I
was like ‘they tried like they've
tried to lowball people in the
past. So I was just like, making
sure That they didn't low ball
you.’ She's like ‘no one's ever
asked me what my salary was,’ I
was like ‘I'm not being nosy.’
I'm like, she's also a woman of
color. And so I was like, ‘I'm not
being nosy I just like wanted to
make sure they were low balling
you.’ And she was like ‘Oh no,’
and I was like, okay, so yeah.
Like, how do you disrupt some
of that?” - Carmela
Opportunities for WoC:
Promotion, Evaluation;
Differing Views on
Promotion
Women of color
discussing their different
views on promotion, and
evaluations.
6 “Because of politics, that are
beyond me, Human Resources
did not support me moving from
the Associate Director of
University housing to the
Coordinator of Pathway* and
First Year Advisor position.
Although the argument could be
made about my salary staying
the same, the title change was
not going to happen. I happen to
be one of very few African
American women on this
campus in a position of power,
power associated with title. To
move me in my opinion would
have cause a little ruckus that
wasn’t needed at the time of
start of Pandemic, and the racial
tension in America. I understood
completely. But these two men
worked to change my job
description to allow me to do
what I want to do, and still

202

maintain my position in
housing.”- Faith
Hiring Practices The participants shared
their experiences during
hiring practices, either
being hired or serving
on hiring or selection
committees.
16 “I think there's needs to be a
larger conversation with folks
that are White-identifying of
like the impact of Whiteness and
structural inequalities that are
created from being in higher
education in general and like
really trying to dissect you know
what parts of our policies are
literally built around systems
that were created to be
inequitable. I'm like talking in
terms, I'm trying to think of an
example, but I'm even like when
I've had to dissect like interview
evaluation forms. I think about,
like, ‘do you perceive this
person as approachable?’ Like
well ‘approachable’ is going to
look so different for people. Um,
we had students say like
multiple times that people that
identify as Black were
unapproachable. And I was like,
we are using terms that are
putting all of people of color in
different, well not all people of
color, but you know what I'm
saying, like we are. Those are
the types of policies, I'm
thinking that we need to have
White folks. take care, well
work on and like find time to
learn about instead of learning it
from folks of color.” - Kim
Mentoring as Resource
In a New Climate;
Lack of
Onboarding/Orientation
Mentoring was seen as a
way to navigate or
acclimate to new
environments such as
the PWI.
2 “I'd probably first evaluate like
what, Who are the folks that are
turning over? Is there a
commonality or common
denominator? like and then you
know something I've been like
Stewing with the past week or
two was noticing that folks that
start in positions that are not in

203

our traditional fiscal year start
date, which would be July. July
is always like this is new
employee orientation. If you
start around like after then
Those folks tend to be the folks
that lead faster. I found that very
interesting. I was like, Folks that
do not have the opportunity to
have a full orientation period
and not just jump right into
school right into like learning
the students, learning the
process these while everybody
else has already moved forward,
um, you know, and Yeah.
Anyway, I digress. But I started
July 2014 and, or yeah 2014
And because of that orientation
period and I'm still here, It's
very, it's very common for that
to happen. But yeah, like I said,
folks who started like mid
January all of them are gone.
And I was looking at this, and I
feel like there's a common trend
here.” - Kim
Institutional Support:
Need for institutional
Targeted Support for
WoC; Lack of
Opportunities for
Advancement
The participants shared
that more institutional
support is needed
specifically for women
of color.
11 “I don't, I don't think so. I don't
think that the institution is
saying, oh, look here are these
opportunities for women of
color and we need them. There
is a very and not not to say that
they're not supportive of it and I
don't. I definitely feel supported
by my feel like my boss does
support me I feel like she does
appreciate my perspective as a
woman of color. But I think it is,
But I don't think there's like a
‘we really want women of color
in these positions.’” – Dolores

“I want to say that they're doing
the theoretical part of providing
people opportunities to train

204

more so that they can promote
once opportunity arises, but the
opportunity rarely comes. And
so that's kind of the more
disappointing part. That's why
we usually see a lot of
administrators and classified
people bounce from campus to
campus over you know their
entire professional career. Just
because the opportunity doesn't
come up as frequently as it
would in like a private sector or
maybe in a different college
system.” - Gloria
Call to recognize WoC
Voices
Women of color valued
their voices being heard
and recognized, and
called for others to uplift
women of color voices.
7 “Yeah, I think that's absolutely
true. And I, You know, I'm
surprised that and share this in
my story, but my first supervisor
in graduate school was a Filipina
woman and she is the person
that had literally instilled in me
like this opportunity to have a
voice, to say that my voice was
valued, that my voice mattered
at the table, and that I shouldn't
just like sit at the table, that I
should find a space for myself to
speak up. I know that it was
welcomed, but I really think if it
wasn't for her, I wouldn't have
seen myself continue in in the
path that I'm in. I think I would
have actually probably looked
for a way out of Student Affairs,
if I didn't see folks that continue
to push me or like continue to
like see me.” - Kim
Mentorship as Acts of Resistance – Changing Culture Through Solidarity/Community
PWI – Invisibility;
Lack of support;
Isolating/alienating;
Feeling left
out/disconnected; hard
to navigate
PWIs were described as
isolating/alienating, with
women of color feeling
invisible, disconnected,
with little support.
9 “Our department is one that
likes to do professional
development during
departmental meetings on
occasion. I was not at this
meeting but a colleague (of
color) told me afterward told me

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that the topic presented this
week was by a White identifying
individual sharing information
about how COVID 19 has
affected communities of color.
The colleague who told me
identifies as an individual of
color and mentioned that it’s
always hard during those
moments when a White
individual is trying to
tell/educate you on things that
you may have experienced
firsthand. One of the points I
made while processing with his
is that it’s hard when White
individuals present/share
because they are providing
data/facts and applying it to the
whole population but when you
as an individual of color
presents
thoughts/data/information, you
make sure to emphasize
something along the lines of
‘this is my personal experience,
I cannot speak for all’”. - Lina
Shared Identities:
Seeking out other staff
of color; Developing
relationships with
staff/faculty of color;
Collaboration with
academic faculty
Women of color
participants shared
seeking out fellow
people of color or
women of color staff
and faculty members for
support.
5 “Yeah, definitely. I mean, It's
the I don't know if I do this
consciously or unconsciously,
probably consciously, of like
seek out the other people of
color on campus right I'm
figuring out who I really clicked
with and vibe as far as like our
same values and the way we
approach our work, um, you
know, the people, the
department that handles our
equity programming, they were
like fire. And I'm like, Oh my
gosh, I just want to learn
everything you have to say let
me kick it with you all day. So,
so that was definitely an area. I
just wanted yeah I attended

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everything possible all the
different programs around
campus and yeah, people who
could give me insight on kind of
like the ins and outs or history or
background on drama or like,
hey, this is how this is um was
really helpful.” – Irene
Benefits of
Networking; Creating
connections
community/Creating
Support Systems for
each other: Cannot do it
alone
Mentoring served as a
way to network, create
connections and support
systems.
10 “Brought that up. She in that
conference. I think she took note
of it. So what she did was she
had a list of all the participants.
So she actually then purposely
introduced me to some of the
participants that oh, you know,
like, she did her research, they're
all Filipina so she did her
dissertation on 1.5 generation
and all that. So I actually from
those three Filipina that I met at
the conference. We've been
doing the conferences together
ever since. So she so I think she
helped me develop that because
within that professional I guess
you're setting that I was part of
but I still was missing something
she recognized it and she
couldn't she couldn't really
empathize. But she understood.
So she found a way for me to
find connection in the missing
gap. Yeah.” - Christine
Peer mentorship: Peers
as role models, peers in
student affairs
The participants found
mentors in peers and
colleagues in addition to
formal mentors.
13 “So I think on the personal side,
the person that I'm thinking of
She herself is also a mom also
works full time and was doing
an EdD program at the time.
And so I think she kind of was
like willing to share with me,
like, oh, And kind of just be
someone to lean on because I
was really nervous because I
was still in coursework. So like
It's not as flexible right like
there are like assignments and

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all these things. And so I think
she kind of really helped me
personally, try to like think
through things and then I think
there are times when I felt after I
had my daughter like Oh, I feel
like such a bad mom because
like i still going to classes and
then I have assignments to do.
And I'm like, not spending the
time that I feel pressured by like
family or just like the culture
that I grew up in that I'm
supposed to be doing. And since
we have a lot of the same
identities, she would like share
kind of how she felt or like how
she did that, she has three kids
now but like with her first and
stuff like that. And so I think
that was really helpful. More on
the personal side, um, but also I
think, Like I said, because it's all
intertwined. It was like really
helpful because she would
always remind me like well you,
well you also work full time.
Right, so like you're working
full time, you're a new mom and
you're going to school. So like
it's okay to have these feelings.
And like you're doing so much
and you just have to figure out a
balance. So what does that
mean? And so she was really
helpful. I decided to take a
semester of a leave of absence.
And I would say that like while
she wasn't like, ‘oh, you should.’
But she was very, like, if that's
what you need to do, That's what
you need to do. And so I think it
was helpful.” - Carmela
Lack of professional
mentors
Sharing experiences of
lack of professional
mentors, also helped
1 “This one is really hard. So I
have several peer mentors and I
have life mentors, but I don't

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them define what they’d
ideally see mentorship
as.
really feel like I have a
professional mentor. I don't have
people who are going to I don't
have. I have friends at my level,
who are going to be like there's
this job or let me put in a good
word for you. Or like let's run
through interviews together. I
have that. I don't have anybody
who's ever been like there's this
job. You're perfect for it. Let me
send it to you, or who is going to
like, look out for me in that way.
And so I guess that's how I
define mentorship is sort of what
I try to do for other people. Is
look at opportunities and, you
know, try to connect the
opportunity to the person, try to
just do what they like show that
support that they may not be
getting elsewhere.” - Frida
Shared Leadership
IHEs PWIs as Barriers
PWIs – hierarchical;
lack of transparency;
insider-outsider culture;
Staff of color – being at
the bottom
PWIs were hierarchical
and staff often felt at the
bottom. PWIs also
lacked transparency and
there was a feeling of
insider-outsider culture.
7 “And I think also it's a little bit
hard in higher ed because you
know when your institution like
students is the focus. And so,
you know, trying to find like a
balance. And then there's like
students and then maybe faculty.
And then if you’re staff and kind
of like at the bottom. And so,
you know, Being in our role like
making sure that you're
advocating for students in your
institution but then also
advocating for yourself. I think
that's difficult when you're
always kind of seen as the
bottom of, You know that order
I guess. Yes, that's so it means
you're creating opportunities.” –
Christine
Challenges for WoC
Students, Staff,
WoC staff described
multiple challenges,
14 “This is in complete contrast to
my previous boss who would

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Faculty: lack of or
resistance to PD; Not
feeling safe; Pay
inequity; Removal or
lack of resources;
Stereotypes; Toxic
environment
including lack of PD,
not feeling safe,
stereotypes, and toxic
environment.
not allow for learning or
development to happen if it was
not under her control. Things as
simple as reorganizing forms so
they are more accessible and
make more sense was met with
resistance with the
understanding it was not my job
to think outside the box, but to
simply do what I was told. That
experience made me
apprehensive to think that other
Leaders could act differently. I
spoke out about this experience
with my current Dean and
expressed my gratitude for the
environment I am in. Working
in a toxic environment that
makes it difficult to try to help
people to the best of your
ability. It was oppressive and
made it difficult for me to get up
in the morning. I was seeking an
opportunity to learn and grow
with freedom and support and I
have found that in my current
environment. The ability to go
to her with my ideas to change
simple things to support our
students is always her main
concern and will support me in
my endeavors.” - Gloria
Commitment to DEI
work – Current
Events/BLM;
Messaging
Communication
WoC participants also
shared that commitment
to DEI was important,
and they noted instances
where the PWI did or
did not live up to their
commitment.
13 “ Just like there's nothing wrong
with California Metropolitan
University, but um I think I give
credit to the students like the
students that really just say
pretty much just said ‘you're all
like crazy to think that you
know what you're doing is
enough.’ And so I think that's
when I became more aware of, I
mean we have a new president
and they're trying to make some
much needed changes, but I
think that was when I really

210

learn about how much
systematic like racism is still
going on in our institution, both
as a university and with them
little pockets of departments and
so I see push, you know, to try
to change it. But you know, it's
still like decades of system that
you're trying to dismantle and I
can still see the struggle with
that.” – Christine

“I feel guilty sometimes when
I'm trying to change it. But in
the meantime, that means people
do have to come here to change
it. And especially when I'm
having difficulty with it. I'm
like, I don't know that this is
something I want to do.
Sometimes I want to quit my job
just for that reason, because I
feel like, Especially when there's
moments of heightened racial
tension, like there was this
summer. I had no interest in
recruiting students to come here
or faculty or staff but yet you
need that to make the change. So
that was a really deep conflict
for me.” - Toughie
PWIs: pressure to be
compliant; deficit
mindset; not
welcoming of authentic
selves
PWIs also upheld a
feeling of status quo and
WoC felt the pressure to
comply, sometimes at
the expense of their
authentic selves.
9 “All the advocacy work I
wanted to do, like, you know, all
the leadership development stuff
I wanted, like all these things
that I wanted to do but because
the institution or because the
organization and the leadership
They did. They just wanted you
to fall in line with what they
have in place. And so if you
don't allow us to show up
completely. Then you're going
to miss out. You're going to
totally miss out. And then we're

211

not going to stay very long.” -
Dolores

Shared Leadership
Shared leadership: Not
hierarchical

WoC saw shared
leadership as the needed
response to the
hierarchical nature of
PWIs. Shared leadership
was valued and that
everyone should feel
like they can contribute.
8 “The individuals writing the
statement hold a variety of
positions ranging from Program
Coordinator to Associate
Executive Director and in the
crafting of the statement, I felt
very little hierarchy or
positionality within the space.
Ideas were shared freely and
openly, there was grace given,
and people offered timely and
specific feedback in the space. It
was not a perfect space but as
close to perfect as can be
achieved.” - Mimi
Mentorship:
Hierarchical; Lateral
reciprocal
Mentorship should not
be hierarchical or top-
down, but rather
horizontal and
reciprocal.
3 “I've, I've learned stuff from
older mentors. And I think
there's also like I feel like it's a
two way street, because I also
have younger people in my life
that are maybe coming out of
their program or also trying to
you know get on their way. As
far as their career. And I feel
like I learned things from them
while they might call me their
mentor, I'm also learning things
from them. And in my
communicating to them like the
lessons I'm trying to share, I'm
like oh yeah I need to hear that
myself too.” - Irene
Leadership identity
formation:
Foundation built at
previous IHE

Some participants
shared that their
leadership identity was
formed at their previous
IHE and that helped
serve as a foundation as
they navigated PWIs.
3 “And so many of the people that
I was around were really in this
for the right reasons. Seaside
University* is a really special
place and our res life team was
really special and it was filled
with people who loved the work
they were doing, were really
about equity and inclusion and
were really trying. So they didn't

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always get it. And they didn't
always land, but they always
tried they always put resources
behind it and it was led by
women and our director was a
woman of color. And there
were, you know, really diverse
groups of people. And so in that
environment. I really felt, you
know, valued and seen and I felt
like I'm gonna do this because
this is what I see other people
doing. When I came here, it was
completely different. I felt like
this place had no soul. It felt like
it was so business so
competitive in a really like it's
just in the air and so there wasn't
anything that I could like
pinpoint but it just didn't feel
like it was serving me. Um, but
luckily, and I tell my partner this
all the time, like I was raised
right like, work-wise/
professionally. I was raised
better than that.” - Frida
Identity as mid level
manager
The WoC participants
also shared their
experiences as MLMs,
and how they viewed
themselves as leaders in
those roles.
11 “Prior to working at this
institution, I saw myself as a
trainer and supporter of my staff
and students. Understanding
their positions prior to my
current position, I wanted to
ensure that I was everything that
I loved and was missing from
my prior leaders. It has changed
now to include also protecting
my staff from unjust or
inequitable practices. My
understanding of where I am the
keeper of my staff has changed
in understanding that not
everyone will make decisions
with the best possible option in
mind. I take pride in standing up
for my staff while still doing my
job.” - Gloria

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Sharing Knowledge and Information
Transparent leadership The WoC participants
also valued transparent
leadership where they
are able to be open and
honest, sometimes this
was a result of
experiencing leaders that
were not transparent.
6 “Yeah, so I think I fit in some of
it, but I also think like, I'm still
really learning and so like I said,
I've been. I've been in the
profession, about six years now
and I've been so so before my
current role, I was a manager for
a year and a half. So I've kind of
been in this like mid manager or
yeah like mid level manager role
for almost three years it'll be,
and so I am maybe, sometimes I
think maybe I'm too transparent.
But it's because I've just had like
bad experiences with lack of
transparency and so I think even
though there's some instances,
and I think like communication
wise.” - Carmela
Culture of care among
WoC
WoC shared that the
culture of care among
fellow WoC was
valuable and something
to be noted.
7 “So we set up a system where
we check in at the beginning of
the week and the end of the
week regarding how we’re
doing at work and the projects
we need to get done. We have
recently added a new level of
support for each other and
started having zoom study
sessions so we can get
homework done. We are both
womxn of color and work in the
same division. I don’t supervise
her, but I do have a ‘higher’
position than she does- however
she has been at the school much
longer than I have. We have
really been able to support each
other through school and work
avalanches. There is such a deep
level of respect and admiration
and of lifting each other up.” -
Irene
Mentorship - Feeling
included valued;
Mattering
Mentorship was also a
way that WoC felt seen,
3 “I also seen a boss, where she
was very collaborative with me,
even though she was a dean very

214

included and valued by
their mentors.
collaborative with me and kept
me you know in touch. And I
felt like I was part of something
bigger. And I felt like my about
my ideas were valued and I
noticed the that change within
myself. So once I do that to
others. It worked out.” - Sonya
Mattering: Multiple
identities
intersectionality; First
Gen identity
Being included and seen
was part of them feeling
like they mattered, and
that their multiple
identities as women and
as persons of color
mattered and were
valued.
12 “Yeah, so I would say it's both. I
would say it's both the previous
institution and the current one.
And again, the people that I look
up to, to see that ability in me to
picture me in those types of
positions, right, like I was never
a person that was like, Oh, I'm
gonna go get my master's
degree. It was like, going to be a
success if I complete my
bachelor's degree because it took
so long for me to even get to
that point. And then they're just
like ‘so, But you're gonna get
your masters, Right?’ ‘I am?
right, can I? is that a thing that I
should do?’ and then, you know,
them just kind of validating the
experience that I've always kind
of made myself not believe was
possible. And so I would say for
both of the people that I look up
to, or both the people who were
who saw the ability in me to do
things that I didn't really think
were true. So the first time my
current Dean gave me an
evaluation, I cried, and I told her
I was like, ‘I'm sorry. Like, I
didn't mean to, like, I'm not a
very emotional person. I was
like, but for you to validate my
existence, right, that what I'm
doing is good work and that you
see additional skills and me that
you'd like to build upon is really
encouraging.’” - Gloria

215

Connection to Larger Purpose
PWI as Barrier
PWIs – inability to be
open to criticism or
change
PWIs are viewed as
institutions that not able
to change or not open to
change, criticism,
critique by others;
upholding the status
quo; nothing needs to
change.
10 “It's filled with these people who
are like, I want you to be honest
with me. I want you to tell me
how you're feeling. I want to
hear your opinions, but I'm like,
No, you don't. Because when I
do, then you you're crying or
you're upset that I was honest…
for me it's almost better if you
didn't ask for it. Right. Like I
don't I don't do well with this
like fake ‘Tell me, tell me,’
because then I feel like you're
wasting my time. It's almost
better for me if people are like,
I'm not going to change. This is
how I am.” - Lina
WoC Perceptions of
PWI: Desire to Change
Culture
WoC have observations
and reflections on PWIs.
At the same time, they
also have the desire to
change the culture at
PWIs.
5 “Ya there's something about
California Metropolitan
University, like, I didn't want to
give up on it. You know, I did
not want to give up on
California Metropolitan
University like I wanted to see
to what extent I want to go to do
it.” – Dolores

“It was just, I think, a really
challenging space that then took
me several years to get to the
place where I felt comfortable
speaking up again in those type
of environments. And so I I feel
like the culture that I started
picking up on was like say nice
things about the institution but
never question it. Like, you
know, you either like drink the
Kool Aid and you really buy in
or you like, Shut up and get out.
And I will like, As I mentioned
earlier, this institution is like
such a deep part of my
experience and life, and I am

216

really invested in staying here
and trying to make it the best
place it can be for students of
color and for staff and faculty of
color as well. And so I didn't
want to just shut up or get out. I
wanted, I want to invest and I
think I've just been really
fortunate that there was other
people who were also seeing this
problematic culture. And then
we had some leadership changes
and all of that. And our
institution is moving in a much
better direction than it was at
that point in time, but that was
probably you know about five
years into my career and it took
me another couple of years to
feel like I had solid footing
again and like confidence in
speaking up and I think it kept
me from moving up actually
because I was so fearful of
whether I had like kind of ruined
to these relationships with some
of these administrators. And I
think imposter syndrome, then
would get the best of me too.
But um just a real fear of
whether I was going to be good
enough or whether I was going
to make it in moving up and so I
stayed in a role at a coordinator
level for probably five years
longer than I should have
because I just was so afraid of
kind of being rejected as I tried
to continue to move forward.” -
Mimi
Larger Purpose, Impact
Servant Leadership:
Larger Purpose/Impact
WoC MLMs are
connecting their
leadership style to
serving others;
connecting why they do
20 “I am here to serve others. I am
here to do what I can to help
others succeed to uplift others I
try to approach my work with
humility. While also being, you

217

what they do to a bigger
purpose (something
beyond themselves).
know, strong and confident and
all of that. And it's a struggle.
It's a real struggle for sure. And
I really believe in just, you
know, being ethical and having
integrity and, you know, the
things that you do when nobody
watches like, that's when it's
your true character and your true
leadership. So, you know, with
my team. I don't ask them to do
anything that I won't do. And it's
something that I see so many
women, and especially women
of color do and not a lot of men
do. I, you know, one of our roles
is to run the Trojan food pantry.
So when we're on campus and it
was open, you know, we were
out there in the rain, and we are
out there, you know, in the hot
sun like loading things and
moving, you know, pounds and
pounds of food and produce in
and out of the pantry and
sweeping and mopping and you
know swiping cards for students
and, you know, heavy lifting in
a whole lot of ways, and then
also meeting with students who
have, you know, live in their
cars and who have really
extreme traumatic situations.
And, you know, the range of
that.
I think does take a lot of
leadership and a lot of, You
know, just making it not about
you and making it about the
team and what's going to make
the team succeed.” - Frida
Opposite of Servant
Leadership: Doing it
for ego, wrong reasons,
leaders examples of
what not to be
WoC participants shared
that they viewed
examples of servant
leadership in which
leaders were doing it
6 “I'm thinking of experiences
where I found resentment
towards like supervisors and I'll
just be a little bit more specific.
So I've had like White

218

“for the wrong reasons,”
and not for others.
supervisors, tell me to do
something that it was very clear,
it's because they would never do
that in their lives. [It was
because of their] title and that
just reminded me that I, you
know, no matter where I moved
up. I won't not, I don’t know, I
wouldn't ask something that's
unreasonable for someone
else… [like set up] tables with
you so that we could create a
great event. Yeah, people stand
on the sideline and say, oh, I'm
I'm too high up for this.” - Kim
Centering Social
Justice, Equity
Participants shared
wanting to center social
justice and equity in
their work, regardless of
their role or where they
are at.
8 “And I think just some general
compassion and recognizing
again the human capital that we
have on our campuses and
another aspect for me and not
only because this matches some
of my identity, but also because
these are issues that I care
deeply about: An emphasis and
intentional centering of
minoritized folks and identities
and also of social justice and
Diversity and Equity and so
really making sure that that
work is infused in everything
that we do.” - Savi
Being the bridge for
students, staff
The participants also
shared that they wanted
to serve as abridge for
students and staff in
their work.
13 “My biggest thing is, For me I
think student services is where
it’s at where I want to be the VP
of Student Services at a
community college because
those services are so well
organized for our students. But I
think the key that is lacking is a
partnership. The bridging and
the communication of those
services like the PR piece. I
always think that's missing and
can be totally improved and
building an army with the staff
that they already have. And I

219

just think there's a lot of things
that can be done by think the
reason I feel that way is because
people believed in me or have
made those comments to make
me believe in myself too.” -
Sonya
Mentorship as a
responsibility:
propelling the field
forward
Mentorship was a way
to move the field
forward, and their
mentors saw their
pouring in as a way to
also ensure that the field
continues to
progress/advance.
7 “And I actually, because of her,
and she didn't even know me.
She just, I think maybe she just
appreciated that I reached out
but she started introducing me to
the different members of the of
the conference. So I ended up
having a bigger role than,
because I thought I was just
gonna like pass out name tags,
but ended up like helping with
the scholarships committee,
which was really good. Like,
you know, I now have
experience, but it was actually,
but when I got to know her, she
actually said she likes it when
she said ‘the young ones,’ they
like, the young ones, Or the new
ones volunteer because it's their
way to kind of pass on their
responsibilities and hopefully
somebody who will continue the
division. So I guess that's why
she kind of just did that and she
said she does that to everyone
who she connects with but then
it's really up to that person to see
how much of that they want to
take on. Yeah. So from there,
she's been really supportive” -
Christine
Paving the way for
others
The WoC saw the
importance of paving the
way for others, whether
it was leaders before
them, or they themselves
paving the way for those
that will follow.
4 “And I think it kind of goes back
to the pouring in. Because you
know I'm sure these women of
color leaders are seeing
themselves as being the only
ones right the being the first of
the only people in these

220

executive positions so that the
people behind them. They need
to be the ones that are going to
be equipped to take on these
challenges or and fill these
positions when they leave.” -
Mimi
Building Others Up Participants also shared
the importance of
building each other up
as leaders.
9 “So my definition of a leader. I
feel like as a little bit more
unconventional than what the
practice has been especially in
higher education for the last. I
don't know, probably since its
inception, honestly, especially in
California. The concept was
basically management for a long
period of time where we're just
kind of keeping the status quo,
making sure that things are so-so
instead of being more
innovative. For me, a leader also
has the ability to maintain
whatever is working and also
have the capacity to innovate for
things that could potentially
impact more change. And then
also being able to grow their
team. I'm a big, I'm a big trainer,
which I figured out in the
positions that I took on, that I
don't believe that anybody
doesn't have the capacity to
learn more, no matter where
they are in their professional
career. If given the correct
opportunity, You know,
everybody will rise to that
challenge.” - Gloria
Aspiring to higher leadership roles (traditional route)
Lack of role models as
challenge
Lack of role models in
higher ed acted as a
challenge or questions to
whether they can keep
going up.

3 “I think it's hard, you know, for
women in general if you don't
see women in leadership. You're
like, is this a place that I can
move up? Is this a place where
I'm welcome to move up? And
then I, I think. Similarly, if

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you're not seeing individual
women of color in higher roles
and you question, Does this
institution or do they care about
what I have to say, or the work
that I have to do?” - Lina
Lack of role models as
motivator
In other cases, lack of
role models in higher ed
acted as a motivator and
as a reason to keep
going.
1 “I mean, it definitely has helped
having women of color mentors
and role models, seeing them in
the position. Because it's like,
yes, it's, it's like, Oh, absolutely.
I can do that and when there is
not. I'm very conscious now of
like when there's not, it's like,
Okay, here we go. Another
White man for that position and
so just because I haven't seen it,
never took that as I can't, I can't
be in that position, or I can't do
that. So it's like if it wasn't a
woman of color in that position.
It was like, well, I'm going to
work so that I that can be me. So
I can do that.” - Irene
Leaders as role models:
Possibility Models
WoC leaders in senior
roles also acted as
possibility models, of
what the participants can
achieve for themselves.
10 “She is also not only successful
in the field of psychology but
also in higher education
administration as the Associate
Dean of Academic Affairs at her
school. She is someone I aspire
to be and someone I highly
respect. I recall having a
meaningful conversation with
her when we first met about
aspiring to be a full-time faculty
because I do not know many
Filipina, full-time faculty.” -
Christine
Opposite: leaders as
examples of what not to
be
Previous leaders that
WoC participants saw
that did not align with
their values also acted as
examples of what not to
do/be.
4 “I feel like I've seen as people
like move up where they were,
like, super like pushing and like
advocating and then as they like
move into higher roles they kind
of like maybe silenced a little bit
more, or maybe like conformed.
And I think that that's like one

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thing I'm like hopeful that like
I'll either catch myself if I see
that happening or that like my
mentors or friends would say
like, ‘hey, you used to like say
these things and all of a sudden
you're quiet, like, what is going
on?’ And I don't know if that's
just my institution or like that's
what I've seen here, but like that
it, like there are a few folks who
have like moved up a little bit
and I'm just like you used to be
like the one being like ‘hey like
this is a problem.’ And now you
just like your...and I don't know
if it's partially like a survival
mode that I sometimes myself
go into, as I talked about, like
the financial pieces. So I don't
know if it's that or like you just
conform. To move up, I don't
know, like, it feels like you
almost sell your soul, a little bit
to move up. So I just hope I
don't do that. And I hope that if
it looks like I'm doing that, that
like the people I've surrounded
myself will like call me out for
it.” - Carmela
Visibility
Representation:
Need WoC leaders
WoC participants noted
that it is important to see
WoC leaders in senior
roles.
11 “I would say that until I started
working at a community college,
I did not see that as being
anywhere near a possibility for a
woman of color because I've
always primarily seen either
You know White men or White
women in our positions that
weren't necessarily
representative of the colleges
that they were servicing or the
communities that they're
servicing. So it's always just
kind of seemed like nothing that
I ever really paid attention to. It
wasn't until I got into the

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community college system when
a role model actually ended up
becoming somebody who was
only a couple years older than
me. Who you know is a woman
of color. She was a director in a
counseling office. And it wasn't
until that moment that I could
see myself in places of power.” -
Gloria
Representation (or lack
thereof); Lack of
representation of
faculty staff of color
Representation of WoC
leaders in senior roles is
important, and it was
noted when WoC
leaders were not heavily
represented among staff
and/or faculty of
IHEs/PWIs.
12 “Yeah, so the institution. My
former institution we served
100% students of color and I
was one of three Latinos, the
other two. One was the front
office person and the other
person was the janitor and so it
was primarily White men
leading it initially. And when I
was again like in that middle
management right and i i do like
this, these kinds of positions
because I can claim power when
I want to and I can say, oh,
you're gonna have to talk to my
supervisor when I want to as
well. So, so I enjoy being in the
middle. But as I got older and
my 13 years progress there, I
realized that it was my
responsibility to speak up about
it. Being the only Latinx student,
[not] student, representative,
there, the only female of color
and I'm like this. This means a
lot for the students. It means a
lot for the families that we're
working for and and leadership
in general needs to be conscious
of that. So I remember really
inserting myself into the hiring
process and volunteering being
like hey, I'll go to this job fair
and recruit people, you know,
just trying to help them get,
expand out of the way that we

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usually receive resumes. And
really intentionally looking for
other people of color to bring
into the building and and I
eventually was successful in
shifting that and again, it was
funny because I forgot how
intentional I was about that, and
I had even told a professor. She
was a new Filipina teacher and
she was like, hey, like, hey,
there's not a lot of us around
here. And I was like, Give me,
give me some time it's going to
change. And then a couple years
later, she's like look like. Do you
remember when you told me
that on the staircase. Like, look
at us now. And I'm like, you're
right. I did say that, we are we're
better now. You know, so that
was a cool moment too.” - Irene
Hypervisibility Taking
up space - Being the
only; Tokenism;
Participants also noted
that sometimes being the
only WoC or person of
color created a sense of
hypervisibility/tokenism.
10 “I think that I will say that like
when I am in spaces where I'm
the only woman of color, I'm
like, very attuned to that because
I also think I think there are
assumptions that are made about
women of color, whether it's that
like, so I think like even the way
I talk, the way I dress, my tone.
If I know pre going into that
meeting, like, oh, I've already
been in one of these meetings
with these folks I do try to
sometimes think, like, okay,
what have my relationships with
those folks already been? what
are like the established pieces? I
will say like I do also err on the
like ‘well I'm gonna wear Like
my red lipstick today and um
like my big ass hoops.’ um
because that to me is like,
empowering and like you know
that's shown as like not

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professional, but I don't really
care. So, so I do think about
those things and It was
something I was thinking about
because I'm like in zoom world,
right. Like that's so different
now because it's like you only
see like this part of someone.
And that's become really
different.” - Carmela
Microagressions
(Differential treatment
as a woman, Mistaken
identities); Lack of
visibility
WoC participants shared
experiences of
microaggressions such
as mistaken identities.
7 “In a campus meeting with a
diverse group of folks from
across the university, a campus
partner said something sexist
and inappropriate. The comment
was along the lines of ‘wow,
your husband actually lets you
work extra hours?’ and was
directed to another woman of
color from a different campus
department. Although it was not
directed to me, I was appalled
that this straight White man
would be so emboldened as to
make such a comment in a
professional setting.” - Frida
Mattering - Multiple
identities,
intersectionality; First
Gen identity
Being included and seen
was part of them feeling
like they mattered, and
that their multiple
identities as women and
as persons of color
mattered and were
valued.
12 “ As valued as maybe a Black
peer. Because the incidents that
we face on our campus are
against the Black community
and then being, we’re pretty
close to where the George Floyd
murder happened right so
another just ...That's because of
that, like I am so aware that like
my Asian opinion may or may
not matter. Having a close peer
who is a who identifies as Black
and hearing like who reaches out
and who asks for opinions. I'm
like, I could tell you that, too.
But it doesn't matter what I have
to say, because I don't look like
the community that was
targeted. So I think those are

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some of the interesting pieces.” -
Lina

“I will say that moments where I
feel like I am supposed to be
where I am result from
interactions with our graduate
students and my peer/colleagues
of color. These interactions
leave me feeling like my
thoughts/opinions matter,
especially for our graduate
students.” - Lina
Aspiring to Leadership Outside Higher Ed (non-traditional route)
Not about title The WoC participants
shared that their
professional aspirations
are not tied to titles.
8 “You know, for me personally
financial liberation is like my
biggest goal. And I say that
because I want my finances to
be a means to like support the
rest of, like, you know, those in
need. And to me, my ultimate
goal is to find a place where I
could impact change. So I don't
know if that means title or if that
means, you know, constantly re-
evaluating. Like, how am I
bettering the work that I'm
already in. So I hope to be in the
current job that I'm in for the
next five years, because I
definitely think there needs to be
a continuum in that type of role
because constant turnover only
impacts the larger mission. So
yeah, that's kind of where I
would say I hope to still be in
this role, but yeah, a lot of my
focus is guided towards
financially liberated life.” - Kim
Open to different
options: Roles,
opportunities outside
higher ed
The participants also
shared that they were
open to different options
and roles outside higher
ed.
6 “I also think some imposter
syndrome was playing a role.
And so I I think I've done some
personal work to really reflect
on and figure that out more. So
within that I think that part of
that will depend on kind of what

227

is next in some respects. So I'm
definitely looking at, because
I'm basically a director without a
director title. And certainly
without director pay and so I'm
looking at formal director of
advising positions. I'm also
looking at, Like I mentioned, the
Pacific City. It's a policy
position, basically. And that's
definitely a route that I want to
go in is doing less direct student
service work and more policy
based work, um, again, with an
equity focus and a focus on
higher ed and education in
general. I'm also interested in
and potentially thinking about
kind of following along the
footsteps of my best friend in
terms of looking at educator
pathway work.” - Savi
Prioritizing Family and Well-Being
Feeling drained,
cultural taxation
Women of color felt
drained as a result of
cultural taxation and
having the burden to
help/teach others.
9 “Now that say stuff like that
where I'm like, no, here we do
XYZ, and it's not on me because
me and my colleagues are
exhausted, like I have another,
He's a man of color, like in the
academic senate really trying to
like make change and help them
understand. And I'm like, you
are going to like you're going to
kill yourself emotionally and
just on all levels, trying to
convince them like unless
people are ready to hear it and
do the work themselves, you
know, like we can keep strong in
doing our thing, but to be able to
try to convince somebody else.”
- Irene
Microaggressions, code
switching
WoC participants shared
experiences of
microaggressions such
as mistaken identities,
8 “And I think I'm still working on
this, but I think like, how can
you show up like
unapologetically and like

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also the need to code-
switch, which can cause
further exhaustion.
genuine? and I mean that in like
I think that we're often told how
to be professional and what that
looks like. What that means for
the attire you wear, How you
talk, and things like that. And I
think I was fortunate to like
have folks who were like, well,
professionalism is a version of
White supremacy and I was like,
‘wait what?’ like I should've
known that... So I think like
challenging those things and
then like show up how you want
to show up. But then also, like,
recognizing that like That can
mean things right? That can
mean impacts and so like you
have to kind of figure out, like,
what are you willing... I don't
think you can be your authentic
self in every space, like I
definitely don't think I can be.
But like, what are the spaces I
can be? Yeah. And that also I
guess ties into like community.
But yeah, like what are the
spaces you can be because
you're going to need those
spaces. because code-switching
or like putting a mask on all the
time is extremely exhausting.
um having to switch like your
language or things like that is
extremely exhausting all the
time. So, like, where do you find
those places that you can just be
like you?” - Carmela
Authentic self:
Imposter syndrome
They also shared
feelings of imposter
syndrome while being at
PWIs.
10 “Now granted, you know, as
women of color. If you get to
the point where even
contemplating this question,
you've already know what it
means to feel like an imposter.
You already know what it feels
to question everything you've

229

already, Probably thought about
how you dress. You know,
you've already probably done all
of that. But I would say that if
you're thinking about it, you
know, and thinking about that, I
would say, you know, just And
it's when I think about my
mentors were the ones who who
did, who were comfortable
being, you know, wearing their
heart on their sleeves, you know
and and and it was okay. And
they were unapologetic about
who they were. So the more
were unapologetic about who
we are, I think that the more I
think we'll be able to make a
difference.” - Dolores
More personal, related
to health; prioritizing
health
Importance of health and
well-being was more
pronounced when
dealing with stress at
PWIs.
1 “The other piece. I think it's
again very personal, but it
definitely impacts that
professional and that's because I
was diagnosed with a chronic
illness. I have multiple sclerosis.
And so to be That something
that people typically don't
disclose. I didn't feel like I had
that option because I was You
know young person early 30s,
who all of a sudden went from
hiking everyday to using a
walker just kind of overnight.
And people know something is
up. So I didn't really have the
option of not disclosing Which
is, in a way, it's kind of
liberating... My capabilities,
because you know as a, I have
imposter syndrome, of course,
and being the only person of
color and first gen and all that,
you kind of like wonder how
people are perceiving your
work. And then I had to throw
this in the mix like okay if I

230

come in with a walker, That
doesn't mean that I can't sit
down and do my work I'm okay.
You know. So that was
interesting. And then also going
through the process of just
reasonable accommodations and
whether or not to get that stuff in
writing and how to navigate. So
the medical stuff for me has
been huge, huge, huge, huge.
And then of course there's pieces
just related to navigating politics
in the actual work itself. But
those, those have all been like, I
don't know what I do without
these folks, you know, it was
really great to have them on
everybody had a little bit
different perspective. But you
kind of take what applies to you,
what you feel applies to you and
formulate your strategy.” –
Toughie
Balancing work and
family life; Identity as
working parent
The participants with
families/children also
noted that they sought
roles or positions that
allowed them to balance
work with family life.
Some also commented
on the pressures to be
present for their families
while also wanting to
advance.
6 “That's hard for me because I
think I like the role that I'm in.
I'm I Have it as I have two kids.
I, I always are for now in my
life. I want to be in a role where
I can leave work at the end of
the day and say, Work can wait
till tomorrow. Um, so I don't
know that there is a position
right now that I could see myself
in, Because my kids are little,
And having a partner who also
works in higher ed. I'm like, we
cannot both be both be at
programs in the evenings are
both be on call and like
responding to things throughout
day and night. Um, yeah, so I
think I always thought it like I
want a role that allows me to put
my family first…” - Lina

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“I think for like the individual
it's telling them, like it's okay to
say what your needs are. Right.
You don't have to bend over.
Just because your work is asking
you to do something or you
have. It is okay to set those
boundaries. It's okay to say,
‘Nope, I'm not going to, you
know, answer an email at 9pm
because of X, Y, or Z thing’ I
think I also think about it as a as
a mother, right. Like, I think,
whatever those boundaries are
that you set. It's okay.” - Lina
Authentic, Real
Mentorship among
WoC
Mentorship was not only
authentic and real but
also allowed participants
to be authentic/real, safe
spaces.
11 “Okay, well one I think being
that token Hispanic. I think a
key part of that mentorship is
finding someone that sees you as
who you are and without seeing
you as that token. A place where
for all my mentors, I believe that
they have allowed me to be
vulnerable without judging me
as on my position or without
expecting me to know more,
they leave me space for
vulnerability and space for
growth, because I think being a
token. I think I struggle a lot
with perfectionism. So it takes a
lot out of me to say, I don't
know, or just say I don't know
what to do next. Even though I
feel that way. It takes a lot out of
me to say to verbalize that and I
need that safe space. I think
within all those mentors is that
space for vulnerability, Space to
be yourself without judgment
and for them to understand that
you're going to have” – Sonya

“At the same time, I wouldn’t
want to be ‘the first to be…’
even if I may have to be at some

232

point because it should no
longer be like that anymore. Our
conversation was very honest,
and she acknowledged that she
couldn’t relate to me with my
identity as a Filipina, but many
other parts of our identities are
similar. Having her as a mentor
and a source of support not only
strengthens my confidence and
identity as an aspiring female
leader in the field of education
and psychology, but
interestingly, also gives me a
stronger sense and pride as a
Filipina. We both recognize that
even within a section for Asian
Pacific American Women,
representations of other ethnic
groups are still lacking.” -
Christine

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Appendix H
Researcher Reflexive Memos
Jan. 15 Reflexive Memo
After having completed my interviews in Dec., one thing that came to mind was positionality.
After speaking with colleagues, I reflected a bit more and realized that I did not really discuss my
positionality with the participants. Outside of the information sheet, I did not share my
motivations of pursuing the study, partly which is rooted in my own position as an Asian-
American womyn working at a PWI. I didn’t really share my identities. I think on the surface,
one could assume I am Asian-American, but not specifically Filipina-American. Other identities
that are not as obvious or visible are my identities as being a child of immigrant parents,
navigating higher education (both as in educational journeys and professional journeys) not
knowing much about social norms, resources, expectations, obligations. So we didn’t get a
chance to talk about that.
What made me refrain from doing so, was that this study is about their stories so I did not want
to distract from that. I wanted to make sure that those stories were highlighted and lifted up, and
not overshadowed by my own. I also realize that it is also about my story. But how do I insert
that, without eclipsing the important stories that my participants shared? Mainly, I want to honor
their voices first and foremost.
I think what stands out to me is: was that a missed opportunity? By me divulging my identities,
could we have gone deeper to a certain extent, than what was shared on the surface level? On
the flip side: would me sharing these identities skewed their responses, or influence them to
answer a certain way? By either in acknowledgement of shared identities, or through the contrast
of such experiences?
I also understand that this is a process. It is not meant to capture everything. The interview
protocols, follow-up questions, all of that is not meant to be perfect. That there will be moments
when you have to sit down and reflect on what worked, what could have been improved upon.
For the most part, I think that the questions were intentionally broad enough, so that the
participants can interpret it as best they could and that they were answering it from where they
were at, at that moment.
Some of the participants I knew fairly well so they were able to open themselves up more. But I
did not know the majority of the participants, so a level of trust is needed. I think they were
vulnerable enough to share what they were comfortable with, and I as the interviewer also
needed to trust them enough to know what they were sharing was coming from a genuine and
honest place.
I’m in the middle of cleaning up transcripts so it allows me a second look at the data. There are
some themes that are coming up frequently among the participants. But I am also mentally
noting the places that they do not overlap or are not parallel, so I found that really interesting and
want to go back to those points. I also am seeing how freeing these interviews have been, how

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they are able to share a part of themselves that they weren’t able to share (or maybe haven’t had
much opportunity to share) before. That they also see or notice some things after verbalizing
them or saying them out loud. That it also gives them some power or agency now knowing what
they know, and having confidence in that. I can also sense that these were some thoughts or
observations they have had but are now (or maybe have rarely) gotten a chance to state them.
I’m also in the process of collecting the first journal entry from the participants. So it is
interesting to see how much was shared in the journal entry versus their interview responses.
Some things that come to mind, in terms of the possible reasons for such reluctance to share,
may be due to the fact that they are individuals who would rather share these thoughts verbally
or in-person, instead of writing on paper. It can be overwhelming and intimidating to ask to write
down your thoughts. Another reason is that it becomes more “real,” that what you write down
and send to someone somewhat feels like it is written in stone and cannot be retracted. So there
may be some hesitancy there. Another thought is that it feels like an assignment or obligatory,
versus something that is done out of one’s own pleasure or enjoyment.
January 27, 2021
Reflection – Data collection
I am in the process of cleaning up the transcripts from the interviews, and have just finished
cleaning up one transcript (perhaps the third in the series). One thing I noticed was that one
question I included but decided to later discard, was revolved around positive or negative
experiences on promotion or hiring as a woman of color.
I noticed that many of the participants couldn’t identify a specific example. In retrospect I can
see why that this was difficult for them to answer, because it is not always explicit or obvious
when a promotion or hiring decision (whether positive or negative) was made based on the
identities of the participant. I think it is difficult to show evidence when discrimination has
occurred during hiring or promotion processes, particularly because these decisions are made on
skillsets. I can see how a statement either affirming or negating the concept that hiring/promotion
decisions can be influenced by identifiers such as race and gender can be uncomfortable to
discuss, because it can then lead to thoughts or reflections on one’s fit or ability to obtain their
role. More specifically, can they remove the idea that their identities as a woman of color played
any role in those decisions?
January 31, 2021
I am in the middle of data collection right now I think this is my fourth transcript
that I’m cleaning up from the interviews. And one thing that I’m starting to realize
after going through the transcripts is that a lot of what I wonder about in terms of
my professional journey is being re-iterated or represented in someway through
the responses of these women of color participants. It’s reassuring to know that
the same questions and feelings that they had as a woman of color administrator
navigating career choices is It’s not much different from my experience. I also am
noticing there are parallels to other women of color participants answers. Some
are very focused on what they want to do what they want to be have a great

235

ambitions and we’re fostered to have those emissions from their predecessors.
Whereas others may not have had that person to do that for them but still had
great ambitions nonetheless. I also take comfort in knowing that behind the
stories are our folks who are very human who not only go through challenges
externally meaning in the actual workplace but also internally in terms of what
choices to make and how does that make them feel or make them look like in
terms of reputation or image. I think that is a really real thing in terms of how what
one experiences on the outside in the workplace with other individuals informs
how they feel about themselves on the inside. During the actual interviews I really
appreciated having these conversations I mean it felt like a conversation with a
colleague. But now listening to the transcripts one more time I feel moved by the
stories because it is coming from a very honest and vulnerable place.

February 7, 2021

I am in the process of cleaning out the transcript of my fifth interview and
somethings that I’m starting to notice about myself as an interviewer is the need
for it to be conversational. So when I’m doing interviews I realize that it flows when
it seems like it’s a conversation. But there are times where maybe I am too much
self-conscious or too much in my head and the rapport seems stiff and maybe the
participants Don’t feel as comfortable or maybe that’s just what I think they’re
thinking. So I guess part of this memo is just to reflect back on if that relationship
can influence the responses and the data. Another thing that I’m noticing is
certain questions are not really answered the way that I’d like them to be
answered or it just makes them feel more uncomfortable. For example the
question about hiring and promotion and if there were any negative and positive
experiences. I think I already wrote a memo about this but I ended up removing it
and subsequent interviews. And I think that was for the best as allow the
conversation to flow even more and that was what I was trying to get out is having
them feel like this is a conversation so that they can be genuinely themselves and
answer in ways that are most honest to them.
Also I think what has been particularly enjoyable about this process of reviewing
and cleaning up the data is it surprisingly “fills up my cup,” as if I’m hearing their
stories for the first time even if it is the 2nd or 3rd time. And I feel I’m gleaning new
lessons from them after re-listening to them.

February 11, 2021

To live in the realm of possibility
Imposter syndrome came up quite a bit. But I’m wondering if those are remnants
of internalized oppression/racism/sexism that is the product of being in higher ed
(particularly PWIs) that perpetuates White maleness as success
Some have commented on advancing to higher positions. But what I found most
interesting and inspiring are those that didn’t quite know what positions to aspire
to but still knew that they wanted more. Whether that was an advanced degree,
more pd, certificates, more experience, the ability to engage in different fields like

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writing or policy work. So to grow more. And to live more in the realm of
possibility. Versus this mindset of being an imposter or being less than (scarcity
mindset).

February 15, 2021
 Often the theme of “culture of care” comes up
 women, particularly women of color, intuitively understand the importance of caring for
others
 To fill in the void that PWIs have created? IHEs highlight those gaps, competitiveness as
it represents or acts as an extension of White male capitalism/colonialism?
 Mutual aid - we have to look out for each other because no one else will, the system ihes
are not going to help us

March 17, 2021

Today I’ve been processing the events of the attacks in Atlanta Georgia on the six
Asian women by a White terrorist. It’s still sticking with me and I think the main
thing that I have walked away from this was just a feeling of stranded rage to
quote Cathy Park Hong from her book minor feelings. And in essence just feeling
alone with my anger and not really feeling acknowledged except from my friends
and colleagues and mentors who I trust to Support me. I think I realize that I hold
the institution my supervisor and higher regard and I was hoping that they would
without prompting acknowledge that pain. And they did. But it felt disingenuous
distant. it felt lacking.

I think this connects to my research in the sense that one of the overwhelming
themes was finding community. And that community would be the saving grace
the thing that sustains you and helps you handle or feel seen during these types
of events. And one thing that stood out from one of my interviews is the concept
of creating community so that it doesn’t fall on just one person. And I’ve been
feeling bit more so right now because even in times of support there would be key
people that I would go to. but they can’t always carry my pain as well as their pain
or the collective pain of the community. So by having the sweater network it helps
other people carry each other when one person cannot do it. So then community
then becomes survival and I think of community similar in the way that may be our
parents or immigrant family members think of community. It was part of their
survival. Especially in hostile environments. And I think about PWIs being those
hostile environments.

237

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Abstract (if available)

Abstract Women of color leaders are not fully represented in the makeup of senior leadership roles such as college and university presidents. As of 2017, only 5% of all US college and university presidents identified as a woman of color (American Council on Education, 2017). It is important that women of color are given ample opportunities to lead institutions of higher education (IHEs) and to contribute to policies that can impact the greater university community. When leadership of IHEs are more diverse, it benefits the larger student community as the students can have confidence that their institution is working towards their benefit when they see leaders who look like them (Finkel, 2019). Using Bronfenbrenner’s ecological theory as a part of the conceptual framework, this qualitative, interview-based study focused primarily on the experiences of women of color mid-level managers (MLMs) at predominantly White institutions (PWIs) and examined how their experiences influenced their leadership aspirations. The findings highlighted four themes: mentorship as a way to persist and resist, shared leadership as a way to counteract PWI culture, connection to a larger purpose as a motivator, and the impact of family and well-being on overall leadership aspirations. Moreover, their viewpoints and meanings of leadership were not restricted to one way to lead, such as the pathway upward to senior leadership roles.

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Asset Metadata

Creator Jose-Chen, Julienne (author)

Core Title Women of color administrators in mid-level management at predominantly White institutions and their leadership aspirations

School Rossier School of Education

Degree Doctor of Education

Degree Program Education (Leadership)

Degree Conferral Date 2021-12

Publication Date 11/02/2021

Defense Date 08/12/2021

Publisher University of Southern California (original), University of Southern California. Libraries (digital)

Tag administrators,College,institutions of higher education,leadership,leadership aspirations,mentorship,mid-level management,OAI-PMH Harvest,predominantly White institutions,shared leadership,University,women of color

Format application/pdf (imt)

Language English

Contributor Electronically uploaded by the author (provenance)

Advisor Samkian, Artineh (committee chair), Olivo, Cynthia (committee member), Slayton, Julie (committee member)

Creator Email juliennejose@gmail.com,juliennj@usc.edu

Permanent Link (DOI) https://doi.org/10.25549/usctheses-oUC16351962

Unique identifier UC16351962

Legacy Identifier etd-JoseChenJu-10195

Document Type Dissertation

Format application/pdf (imt)

Rights Jose-Chen, Julienne

Type texts

Source University of Southern California (contributing entity), University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses (collection)

Access Conditions The author retains rights to his/her dissertation, thesis or other graduate work according to U.S. copyright law. Electronic access is being provided by the USC Libraries in agreement with the author, as the original true and official version of the work, but does not grant the reader permission to use the work if the desired use is covered by copyright. It is the author, as rights holder, who must provide use permission if such use is covered by copyright. The original signature page accompanying the original submission of the work to the USC Libraries is retained by the USC Libraries and a copy of it may be obtained by authorized requesters contacting the repository e-mail address given.

Repository Name University of Southern California Digital Library

Repository Location USC Digital Library, University of Southern California, University Park Campus MC 2810, 3434 South Grand Avenue, 2nd Floor, Los Angeles, California 90089-2810, USA

Repository Email cisadmin@lib.usc.edu