Date of Conferral

4-21-2026

Degree

Ph.D.

School

Human Services

Advisor

Virginia Smith

Abstract

Black women have long contributed to leadership in academia, government, and the nonprofit sector, yet they remain significantly underrepresented in senior leadership roles in higher education. When Black women are missing from leadership, institutions lose out on talent, students lose out on representation, and society loses out on the full range of perspectives needed to solve complex problems. Grounded in Black Feminist Thought, this general qualitative study explored the experiences and perceptions of bias and barriers among Black women serving in leadership roles at the dean level and above in higher education. Data were collected through structured interviews with seven participants recruited via purposive sampling. Five themes emerged from the thematic analysis: (1) the concrete ceiling, (2) intersectional discrimination, (3) professional and social isolation, (4) tokenism and hypervisibility, and (5) resilience as strategic resistance. A key recommendation is for academic leadership to implement transparent, equity-centered promotion and evaluation processes that include explicit, publicly available criteria, regular audits for racial and gender bias, and diverse review committees. The social impact implications include the potential for higher education leaders to dismantle systemic barriers by fostering pathways that ensure diverse representation in academic leadership and by creating more inclusive and equitable higher education environments.

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