Resilient Herstories: Leading from the Periphery with Purpose, Power, and Possibility

• In Event: Celebrating 15 years of Herstories: (Re)membering Black Women's Leadership Then and Now

Abstract

In 2011, Herstories: Leading with the Lessons of the Lives of Black Women Activists offered a groundbreaking intervention in the field of educational leadership by naming and theorizing the leadership practices of Black women as both legitimate and transformative. Co-authored with Dr. Judy Alston, this work emerged as a counternarrative to dominant leadership theories that often excluded the lived experiences, spiritual foundations, and culturally grounded practices of Black women. More than a decade later, I return to Herstories not simply to reflect on its impact, but to extend its legacy through the introduction of a new conceptual model: Resilient Leadership Blueprint (RLB).

My contribution to this session revisits Herstories not as a retrospective, but as a launching point for renewed inquiry into the liberatory possibilities of Black women’s leadership. I offer Resilient Leadership Blueprint as a theoretical evolution that centers belonging, cultural memory, and intergenerational strength. Rather than frame resilience as stoic endurance or individual grit, I define it as a communal, strategic practice of transformation rooted in what Dillard (2012) refers to as endarkened feminist epistemology, where leadership is embodied, spiritual, and sacred. This model is informed by the “outsider-within” positionality that Collins (2000) describes, where Black women lead from the margins with insight shaped by generations of resistance and innovation.

Resilient Leadership recognizes that Black women have always led from freedom schools to kitchen tables not for recognition, but to preserve dignity and reimagine possibility. As Love (2019) argues in her abolitionist framework, leadership must move beyond mere reform and toward radical transformation. Resilient Leadership Blueprint echoes this call, particularly in educational spaces where Black women continue to navigate systems not designed for their thriving. It asks: What might institutional change look like if we honored the leadership of those who have never had the luxury of detachment?

In this session, I will offer the core tenets of Resilient Leadership Blueprint: leading with integrity under pressure, creating belonging in exclusionary spaces, and cultivating vision in the face of systemic inequity. These tenets are grounded in both scholarship and practice, drawing from my experience as a leadership strategist and my continued inquiry into educational change. As Walker (2000) demonstrates in her historical study of Black educational communities, the leadership of Black women is grounded not only in excellence but in care, cultural responsiveness, and collective advancement.
Moreover, Resilient Leadership aligns with Muhammad’s (2020) call to cultivate genius through historically responsive, equity-centered approaches. It honors the intellectual and emotional labor of Black women and invites the field to embrace leadership models that prioritize justice, joy, and purpose.

Ultimately, this session contribution reframes Herstories as a living text, one that continues to inform, disrupt, and inspire. Resilient Leadership Blueprint offers a framework that emerges from the periphery but speaks to the future, urging the field of educational leadership to learn from those who have always led with wisdom, courage, and uncompromising clarity.

Author

• Patrice A. McClellan, The Ronald Group