Shedding the Chrysalis

Overview & Synopsis

Shedding the Chrysalis: Black Women Leading in Higher Education features the voices of six experienced and emerging Black females in a variety of academic leadership roles. This book provides a Black feminist perspective, highlighting the need to address racial realism within higher education administration. These personal testimonies focus on a variety of levels in the academic hierarchy to emphasize the continuum across the lived experiences of these women, some of whom have served in multiple upper-level administrative roles. The contributors’ positions range from postdoctoral research fellows to positions reporting to central administration at predominantly white institutions. Shedding the Chrysalis underscores what these women have learned from mentors, allies, and adversaries that can help us all—executive-level leaders, faculty and staff at all ranks, and those aspiring to leadership positions—to build and sustain a more stable terrain in academic leadership for a variety of minoritized groups.