Leading Authentically
as a Woman of Color
Is our leadership
producing the results
we’re looking for?
8
Leadership
Five years ago, I was promoted to
a director role at Partners in School Inno-
vation, a non-profit headquartered in San
Francisco that works toward educational
equity by supporting the professional de-
velopment of teachers and leaders. I was
excited and felt ready for the promotion, but
when I assumed the new role, I encountered
challenges I had not anticipated, Over time,
I learned some valuable lessons about what
it means to be a woman of color in a leader-
ship position.
To explain my experience properly, I will
start with a story from my childhood. I
emigrated from Hong Kong to Cupertino,
California when I was 8 years old. I was sud-
denly seen as different; my appearance, my
language, my culture, and my values were all
different from many of the other kids at my
school. And the implicit and explicit mes-
sages that I received were that different is not
good. Growing up as a Chinese-American
immigrant girl, I struggled with living con-
fidently in my own skin and embracing all
the things that make me unique. For many
years, I tried to hang on to my old identity
while feeling pressure to just fit in, telling
myself, “Stop speaking Cantonese.” “Don’t
eat the food you love so much from home.ß”
(Dim sum wasn’t cool back then.) I lacked
guidance from my immigrant parents and
other caring adults on how to navigate the
complexities of growing up in America as a
person of Chinese ancestry.
My K-12 experience and the challenges I
experienced as a second language learner are
part of why I followed in my parents’ foot-
steps and became a teacher in 2006. It was
important to me to honor their sacrifices
and create opportunities for future genera-
tions. I have dedicated my career to cultur-
ally responsive pedagogy in an effort to
ensure that students like me have the guid-
ance and resources they need as they move
through our education system and society.
I understand the challenges of forming an
identity while straddling two cultures, and
I now see that my continued journey to be
authentic has played a huge role in my de-
velopment as a woman leader of color.
After five years of teaching, I became a
coach to teachers and leaders through my
work at Partners in School Innovation.
Within a short time, I also became an in-
formal coach to colleagues within my or-
ganization. My managers saw leadership
By Cynthia Ho