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This study examined how Black women professionals activate their power by sponsoring other Black women to remediate the chronic problem of the underrepresentation of Black women in positions of organizational leadership. This qualitative, multi-case, exploratory study animated the quantitative data about Black women professionals by giving them a voice and an opportunity to share their lived experiences as they related to the findings about studies on the leadership development of Black women. The firsthand insights of the Black women in this study provided data about the effects that race, gender, laws, policies, identity, and ethics have on Black women professionals’ efforts to leverage their influence and elevate other Black women to leadership, i.e., sponsorship. The data revealed the consensus of concern among the Black women in the study about the lack of Black women leaders. Major findings from the study include: the challenges that Black women experience in society and in the workplace that hinder them from practicing sponsorship; the origination of the Theory of Concentric Positionality of Identity, i.e., Concentricity, as a means to understand how positionality, identity, and in-group affiliations affect the practice of sponsorship among Black women; the historical and temporal factors that have affected the practice of sponsorship among Black women; and data that demonstrated the viability and effectiveness of sponsorship among Black women as a leadership development strategy to increase the number of Black women leaders. Keywords: Black women, sponsorship, underrepresentation, education, leadership, identity, intersectionality, race, gender, women, law, ethics, ethical considerations, positionality, concentric, Theory of Concentricity, Concentric Positionality of Identity. / Educational Leadership

Private and public sector organizations have become increasingly interested in promoting diversity. Due to barriers attributed to race and gender, women and minorities often find it hard to break through the glass ceiling. Mentoring is a tool to assist with breaking through the glass ceiling. This interest has led to extensive growth in mentoring research and the design of a more expanded concept, developmental networks. Little empirical research informs our understanding of Black women in developmental networks and their political identities within those networks. This qualitative study, within the framework of grounded theory method and of case study research, examines two research questions: (1) What do Black women federal senior executives value within their developmental networks? (2) How do Black women federal senior executives construct political identity within their developmental networks? Applying the conceptual framework of Black feminist thought and developmental network support theories the study examined the developmental relationships of three Black women senior executives. This research highlights the development of a group of high achievers and the contributions of their self-identified support systems. Data analysis from unstructured person-to-person interviews, a questionnaire, and researcher theoretical memos identified the themes support network, self-definition and self-determination, and ecology of life. The most visible codes were significant friendship, workplace behavior, social network composition, and Black woman. In conclusion, the women valued relationships that produced psychosocial outcomes such as friendship, trust, honesty, direct feedback, and reciprocity. They also valued relationships where they received workplace guidance and career exposure from mentor, friend, sponsor, and ally developers within or outside of the workplace. The women developed networks that provided closeness and consisted of developers from different social arenas. They defined their political identities, roles, coping strategies for life challenges and fostered relationships that recognized the importance of ethnic/racial respect, and understanding personal strength. In addition, the women preferred informal developmental relationships with Black and male developers of different ages. Due to a small sample size, self-reported data and the application of grounded theory method, the findings of this study were interpreted with caution. Provided were recommendations for future research and practice. / Ph. D.

Diversifying the engineering workforce has been a national imperative for several decades. The increased participation of Black students in engineering is commonly identified as a crucial area for improvement. Yet, the rates of engineering degree completion are slowing for Black women in particular. In 2015, less than one percent of all U.S. engineering bachelor's degrees were awarded to Black women. To support broadening participation efforts, I use an anti-deficit approach to examine the career orientations and mobility patterns of Black women working in computing and engineering roles in the tech industry. By characterizing the different career motivations, strategies, and points of transition in the careers of a diverse sample of Black women, I sought to disaggregate the Black women's engineering and computing career experiences—particularly as it relates to how and why they move into, around and out of roles in the tech industry. Using a qualitative multi-case study, I conducted a multi-level career mobility analysis on secondary data and user-generated social media artifacts to extend theory on career orientations and talent management to help normalize "non-traditional" career trajectories. The study findings are useful to inform the next generation of Black women interested in tech on the different ways to approach and achieve subjective career success and satisfaction in engineering and computing fields. In this dissertation work, I discuss how the varied insights of Black women's career experiences in tech can be leveraged for practitioners and industry leaders to broaden the participation (e.g., to attract, retain and better support) of students and employees by identifying their career orientations and then using that to inform career preparation and development that aligns with different engineering and computing career outlooks. / Doctor of Philosophy / The lack of role models is a hindrance for aspiring Black women engineers and their decisions to continue choosing engineering. The lack of representation of Black women in industry similarly presents obstacles for their career advancement. Because neither role models or representation can be increased in retrospect, it is imperative to study and highlight the visibility of the Black women engineers currently practicing engineering and bring awareness to their career experiences in industry to better inform recruitment and retention efforts. The purpose of this qualitative multi-case study is to describe the varied career orientations of Black women working as engineers in Tech and to link their career orientations to their career outcomes. To support broadening participation efforts, this research uses an anti-deficit approach to examine the career mobility patterns of Black women working in computing and engineering roles in the Tech industry. Using a curated secondary data set based on social media artifacts and user generated data, this study characterizes the different career motivations, strategies, and points of transition in the careers of a diverse sample of Black women. In efforts to disaggregate Black women's engineering and computing career experiences, ten perspectives on how and why Black women move into, around and out of roles in the tech industry were examined. The analysis revealed that participants' career orientations were differentially motivated by needs, talents and or values which influenced how participants made career related decisions. Additionally, both physical and psychological mobility of participants was examined and then compared in the cross-case analysis to derive six unique career archetypes that were useful in characterizing the career challenges and aspirations in participants' lived career experience. This study aims to normalize "non-traditional" career trajectories and inform the next generation of Black women interested in Tech on the different way(s) to approach and achieve career success and satisfaction in engineering and computing fields. In addition, study findings can be leveraged by human resource personnel and career managers to anticipate common career challenges based on individual employee career orientations, and align better reward structures and policies to support a wider range of employee career outlooks. The study emphasizes the strategies and outlooks critical for Black women's success and satisfaction to support their continued participation in the engineering and computing workforce.

Through employing critical narratives, this qualitative study examined the experiences of Black women who utilized their scholarship and activism to address campus climates at a predominantly Chicanx Latinx institution in Southern California. Six Black women – two faculty, two staff, and two students – participated in the study. All participants were active with Ethnic Studies (Pan-African Studies), the campus Cross Cultural Centers, and Black Student Union student organization in some capacity. Literature on the three areas focuses on the history of and ongoing struggle to exist, significance to campus life, and meaning in the lives of marginalized and minoritized communities. The study used three frameworks: Critical Pedagogy, Critical Race Theory, and Black Feminist and Black Womanist Theory to analyze the critical narratives of the women. Findings revealed Black women integrate community issues into their professional and personal lives, experience rare moments of being celebrated, and must contend with intentional efforts to silence their voices and activism. This study, informed by the Ethnic Studies politics of higher education, contributes to this field by identifying how Black women activists contribute to the moral and ethical leadership of campus climate conversations.

The strong Black woman (SBW) schema is a racialized gender role characterized by emotional control, independence, and self-sacrifice. Little is known about how internalization of the SBW schema may influence Black women's romantic relationships. The current study explored the link between endorsement of the SBW schema and relationship flourishing through gender role conflict (the discrepancy between societally prescribed and personally enacted gender roles) and considered how these associations may vary based relationship type (queer or non-queer). One hundred eighty-eight Black women (Mage = 32.28, SD = 11.52 years) completed measures assessing SBW schema endorsement, gender role conflict (GRC), and relationship flourishing, as well as opened-ended questions about their romantic relationship. A mixed-method approach was used, and data was analyzed using a mediated moderation analysis utilizing PROCESS Macro and the thematic analysis method. Results revealed a significant negative correlation between the SBW schema and relationship flourishing. Additionally, GRC did not mediate the association between SBW schema and relationship flourishing, nor was that association moderated by relationship type. However, post-hoc analyses demonstrated that external GRC moderated the association between SBW schema and relationship flourishing. Themes revealed that participants experienced gender role conflict in their relationships both interpersonally (i.e., desire for boundaries, feeling disregarded, feeling prioritized, causing disagreements, and providing support) and intrapersonally (i.e., feeling unsupported, feeling emotionally and physically depleted, and feeling disconnected).

Black women face significant social and economic adversities throughout their life course as intersecting identities impact their experiences of double jeopardy (gender and racial discrimination) and result in various forms of inequity. Though researchers have examined the health inequalities experienced by Black women, Black women as caregivers of their children who have been diagnosed with mental illnesses have yet to be examined in research. Gaps in knowledge exist regarding how a child's diagnosis of a mental illness impacts the parenting practices of Black women and the family dynamics. Further, the barriers to health access experienced by Black women as they navigate mental health systems and the resiliency factors and coping mechanisms employed by Black women have yet to be examined. Utilizing a grounded theory method of qualitative inquiry, this study addresses the gaps in the literature, is a response to a direct call to research, and examines the lived experiences of Black women as caregivers for children diagnosed with mental illnesses.  Findings indicated that the mothers find and navigate resources and interventions independently; they utilize formal sources as a last resort and often find those supports ineffective, and they are in a constant state of learning and teaching others about the mental health needs of their children. Though the mothers sought support, they live in a state of isolation, meeting the mental health needs of their children and the needs of others in their families, with limited support from both formal and informal sources.

Despite the guidance provided by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission's manual, which encourages workplaces to create policies that respect racial hair texture differences, hair-based discrimination still exists in workplace appearance policies. When Black women contest this discrimination in courts, presiding judges dismiss their racial claims by decoupling hair from the body as a racial signifier and reducing it to an aesthetic choice. While court decisions and workplace policies contend that Black women's hair's mutability separates it from immutable bodily racial markers, the words of Black women tell a different story. This study uses Black feminism qualitative inquiry to understand the meaning of natural hair and hairstyles from Black women themselves through semi-structured interviews of 16 Black women professionals who wear natural hair and hairstyles in the workplace. Results show that Black women's workplace experiences challenge the courts' assumption of Black women's hair as solely an aesthetic choice. By listening to Black women, we find that choosing to wear natural hair and hairstyles in the workplace is an embodied experience, one that makes their Black and female bodies hypervisible in white space and illuminates the systems of oppression at work within workplace appearance policies and practices that impact Black women's professional success. This study illustrates that white institutional spaces are not only racialized but gendered; that Black women have developed a strategy to combat conformity and embrace authenticity in the workplace, which I call presentability politics; and that using hair as a conduit, Black women practice Black feminist love ethic to reflect a love for self while welcoming others to also express themselves freely in the workplace.

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