Black Women in Leadership Positions in Rural Nonprofit Organizations: Shifting Toward Intentional Intergenerational Leadership and Mentorship Model Centered on Black Women’s Collective Identity

Black women have to overcome various social and structural obstacles while advancing to leadership positions. The purpose of this study is to understand the lived experiences of Black women leaders as they rose to the leadership position. We used the grounded theory method to analyze the lived experiences of n = 12 Black women leaders working in nonprofit organizations, from a broader sampled study carried out in 2017-2018 using semi-structured interviews, in rural East Texas. We open coded and triangulated data while bracketing our preconceptions and constantly compared emerged themes to develop the primary themes. We followed up with thematic coding using the leadership framework for the selective themes. The emerged themes were conceptualized to hypothesize a proposed framework on Black women leadership. Based on our analyses, some of our primary themes reflected the support of family, beliefs, and faith among our participants, while demonstrating resilience in the face of challenges due to intersections of race, gender, and lack of mentorship. Their leadership trajectory based on the selective themes were centered around intergenerational leadership development, leadership values, and other's perception of Black woman in leadership. The themes generated show that Black women have remarkable resilience in a service-driven leadership ideology grounded in faith, family, community support, and the collective identity of being a Black woman. Our proposed framework has implications in generating intentional leadership pathways for strong and compassionate next-generation Black women leaders and mentors which is essential for development and sustainability of human service organizational settings in nonprofit leadership.