Research | Academia
Dr. Portia is a scholar- practitioner focused on the experiences of Black women involving their career progression and leadership development.
Her work is focused on those experiences of Black women leaders considering their racialized, gendered and cultured experiences.
Dissertation Abstract
The literature on Black women leaders, where it exists, focuses on the barriers to Black women becoming leaders or being fully empowered when in leadership positions. However, to understand the leadership identity of Black women, and perhaps help to explain the absence of Black women in formal leadership spaces, means to examine the influence of race, gender, and culture on leadership behavior, as well as the setting in which leadership exists. This qualitative grounded theory study explored the leadership skills and practices of 15 senior-level cross sector Black women leaders.
The data was collected in two phases: 1) a leadership questionnaire and 2) two focus groups analyzed using a constructive approach to the analysis. Relatedly, there is little researched or written on how Black women’s leadership practice is developed within systems of whiteness that create conditions for survival and protection. The study findings suggest that this impacts how Black women describe their practice as a result of their racialized, gendered and cultural experiences. A grounded framework of the interrelatedness of their identities, leadership experience informs Black women’s employment of strategic skills and practices.
Publications
Newman, P., Berry, R., Sun, H., and Hudson, L. (2023) Preparation, Placement and Persistence of Black Girl Learners: A Systematic Review of Emerging Literature. AERA Paper Acceptance.
Newman, P. (2023) A Multi-methodological Approach to Research and Analysis of Black Women’s leadership Skills and Practices. AERA Paper Acceptance
Newman, P. (2022) Ruminations of Black Womanhood, Leadership and Resistance. G. Wilson, J. Acuff, A. Kraehe (Eds). A Love Letter to This Bridge Called My Back. Feminist Wire Series, Arizona
Newman, P. (2021, October) Ask Me Anything: Let’s Talk Diversity, Inclusion and Race. [Presentation]. Virginia Commonwealth University Alumni Relations. Virtual.
Hurd, V., Newman, P., and Berry, R. (2021, October) Identifying Organizational Containment: Whiteness as a System of Oppression Affecting Black Girls in Urban Public Schools [Presentation]. University Council for Educational Administration Conference, Columbus, OH.
Newman, P. (2021, May). Leading in Crooked Rooms: Race, Gender, Culture and Black Women’s Leadership Skills and Practices [Doctoral Dissertation Thesis]. Virginia Commonwealth University. VCU Scholars compass. https://scholarscompass.vcu.edu/etd/6622
Newman, P. (2021). The Room Is Crooked AF: Black Women, Resistance, and Leadership. In S. Rodriguez, & K. Brown (Eds.), Black and Brown Leadership and the Promotion of Change in an Era of Social Unrest (pp. 124-148). IGI Global. http://doi:10.4018/978-1-7998-7235-1.ch006
Newman, P. (2021) For the culture: Black women’s leadership skills and practice. P. Moorosi, V. Showunmi, C. Shakeshaft, and I. Oplatka, (Eds.), The Bloomsbury Handbook of Gender and Educational Leadership and Management. Bloomsbury Academic UK. In Press.
What am I reading today?
Books are my way of staying connected to the world.