About the Center

The Center for Black Women, Work, and Power exists to study, document, and shape the conditions of work affecting Black women in the United States.

At a moment marked by economic precarity, workforce disruption, and institutional retreat from equity commitments, the Center focuses on how Black women experience power, policy, and leadership across sectors—and how systems respond, or fail to respond, to those realities.

Our work is grounded in research, narrative analysis, and applied inquiry, with the goal of informing public discourse, organizational decision-making, and long-term structural change.

The Center’s work is guided by three core areas of inquiry: 

• Workforce Transformation
  How shifts in labor markets, technology, and economic policy are reshaping opportunity, stability, and mobility for Black women.

• Leadership and Power
  How Black women navigate leadership roles, authority, and institutional culture—and how power is constrained, contested, or redistributed within organizations.

• Institutional Accountability
  How corporations, public institutions, and philanthropic systems respond to stated commitments around equity, inclusion, and responsibility, particularly in moments of crisis or retrenchment.

 The Center prioritizes work that bridges analysis and lived experience, treating Black women not as a monolith or demographic trend, but as critical actors within the American economy. 

The Center for Black Women, Work, and Power was founded by Elizabeth Leiba, a writer, researcher, and workforce strategist whose work examines leadership, labor, and institutional behavior through both narrative and analytical lenses.

Elizabeth is a researcher and writer whose work examines how workplace systems influence communication, power, and economic outcomes for Black women. She is the author of multiple books on work, leadership, and power, and her writing has explored the intersection of personal experience, organizational culture, and systemic change. Her work has been informed by years of engagement with corporate leaders, educators, workforce practitioners, and policy-adjacent spaces.

Drawing from qualitative analysis, lived observation, and interdisciplinary research across labor studies, organizational psychology, and leadership theory, her book I’m Not Yelling (2022) documents silence as a rational adaptation to workplace structures rather than a deficit of confidence or skill.

Her research centers on how bias becomes operational through performance norms, leadership expectations, and informal cultural rules, and how these systems shape compensation, advancement, and retention. She approaches her work as a scholar-practitioner, translating research insights into frameworks that inform institutional accountability and systemic change.

The Center represents a continuation and deepening of this work, providing a formal home for research-driven inquiry and public-facing scholarship.

Research Focus

The Center's work examines how workplace systems shape voice, power, leadership access, and economic outcomes for Black women across U.S. professional environments. Inquiry focuses on institutional design, organizational norms, and accountability mechanisms rather than individual behavior or adaptation narratives.

The research approach integrates long-form inquiry, narrative analysis, longitudinal observation, and applied engagement across corporate, educational, and policy-adjacent contexts.

I’m Not Yelling (2022)

Foundational Field-Based Study

This work represents an early foundational study in my research on voice, silence, and power inside U.S. workplaces. The project analyzes how Black women learn silence as a rational response to organizational norms, performance evaluation practices, and racialized expectations of professionalism.

Rather than framing communication challenges as individual deficiencies, the research documents silence as a predictable outcome of institutional design. The study introduces core questions related to risk, visibility, and how voice is rewarded or penalized over time.

This work established the analytical foundation for subsequent research.

Protecting My Peace (2024)

Applied Structural Analysis

This research extends earlier findings by examining boundary-setting not as a personal wellness practice, but as a structural response to organizational overload, emotional labor extraction, and misaligned accountability.

Through applied inquiry and narrative analysis, the work explores how Black women navigate environments where institutional demands routinely exceed formal role definitions without corresponding authority, protection, or compensation.

The study documents boundaries as adaptive strategies within systems that normalize overextension while framing endurance as leadership readiness.

I Came to Slay (2025)

Longitudinal Synthesis

This work functions as a longitudinal synthesis integrating themes developed across earlier research. It examines how early constraints on voice evolve into leadership trade-offs, how boundary-setting becomes both protective and penalized, and how institutional responses compound over time.

Drawing from multi-year observation and sustained engagement across sectors, the synthesis highlights cumulative effects that emerge only longitudinally, particularly the professional costs of adaptation within systems that reward conformity while claiming equity.

This book serves as a connective framework for current research agenda and informs the analytical foundation of The Center for Black Women, Work, and Power.

Current work builds on this body of research to examine:

• Workforce transformation and institutional response to economic disruption

• Leadership evaluation, promotion pathways, and accountability structures

• Organizational norms that shape participation, retention, and advancement

• Structural conditions affecting psychological safety and professional sustainability

This work is intended to support long-term research, public scholarship, and institutional engagement. 

Planned and in-progress work includes: 

• A flagship research brief examining the current inflection point facing Black women in the U.S. workforce 

• Long-form writing projects focused on labor, leadership, and institutional accountability

• Convenings and advisory engagements with organizations navigating workforce change

• Public essays and analytical commentary grounded in research and lived experience

 Additional details will be shared as projects are published and partnerships are formalized. 

The Center for Black Women, Work, and Power

A research-driven initiative supporting sustained scholarship, public-facing analysis, and institutional engagement focused on workplace systems and accountability. The Center is intentionally structured as a lightweight research entity to preserve independence, rigor, and publication focus.