From Token to Trailblazer: Breaking the Ceilings in Education Leadership

When we talk about leadership, we often celebrate individual resilience. But we rarely talk about the ceilings—the invisible (and visible) structures that keep women of color out of decision-making rooms.

This week, I hosted a livestream titled Breaking the Bamboo and Concrete Ceilings. What follows is a deeper reflection on that conversation, along with steps we can all take to shift the system.

What Are the Ceilings We Face?

• Concrete Ceiling – faced by Black, Latina, and Indigenous women; visible and rigid, reinforced by racism and sexism.

• Bamboo Ceiling – faced by Asian and Pacific Islander women; subtle and cultural, often reinforced by myths like “too passive” or “too foreign.”

• Mosaic Ceiling – a term I use to describe the layered, complex barriers Middle Eastern women face. We’re often the first, the only, and the unheard.

I’ve lived these realities in many forms.

When I was appointed to teach at the School of Law at Baghdad University, I was the only female faculty member among 45 men. Every staff meeting, every lecture hall, every policy discussion reminded me not of my credentials, but of my visibility. I wasn’t just expected to teach. I was expected to justify my presence.

In academic classrooms abroad, I was often the only woman—or the only Middle Eastern woman. I remember sitting in lecture halls or conference panels, raising intricate questions about post-conflict development, the connection between basic services and stability, or the role of environmental policy in peacebuilding. These were not tangents. They were critical issues rooted in lived experience and scholarly research.

But instead of engaging with the substance, some organizational leaders met my questions with skepticism. And they weren’t shy about the reason: it wasn’t what I was saying—it was who was saying it.

Still, I pushed further. I researched, published, and spoke. My work on post-conflict governance and environmental security appeared in peer-reviewed journals. The same perspectives that were once doubted became part of the dialogue.

These ceilings—whether bamboo, concrete, or mosaic—do not define us. But they do shape the landscapes we must navigate.

The Hidden Costs of Leadership

• Being “the first” means being hyper-visible and invisible at once.

• We carry “cultural taxation”—uncompensated DEI work expected from us because of who we are, not what we’re hired for.

• We are told to be twice as good to get half as far.

Leadership from the margins is not just strategic. It’s emotional. It’s spiritual. It’s survival.

Takeaways: What You Can Do Today

Here are a few questions I posed to the audience—ones I now pose to you:

• Reflect: Where might you benefit from the ceiling you say you want to dismantle?

• Mentor: Who are you actively uplifting, especially when no one’s watching?

• Speak Up: When is your silence protecting power, rather than people?

• Build: What policies or practices can you co-create to actually dismantle bias?

What Systems Must Do

Institutions can't keep putting the burden on individual women of color. Systems must:

1. Track racialized promotion and pay equity data.

2. Compensate cultural labor, not just praise it.

3. Fund leadership pipelines that reflect all our communities.

4. Center healing—not just diversity—in their inclusion strategies.

Final Word: Lead Anyway

You are not too much.
You are not alone.
You are already enough.

So lead anyway. The ceilings may crack, or you may be called to build a whole new structure.

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