What Your Comfort Costs Us How Women of Color Reimagine Leadership to Transform Workplace Culture

by Alcalde, Gabriela M.

• ISBN13: 9798889842132
• ISBN10: 888984213X
• eBook ISBN(s): 9798889842149
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2025-03-11
• Publisher: North Atlantic Books
• More Book Details

Summary

A woman of color-centered approach to transformative leadership: how to build better workplace cultures that resist tokenization, dismantle white supremacy, and empower BIPOC women leaders to thrive

What happens when workplaces put the comfort of white people above the safety of women of color?

Our work environments are toxic. From microaggessions to burnout, the effects of white supremacy at work are evident, and women of color are disproportionately affected. We need solutions for healthier, more inclusive organizations—and the stakes are high.

What Your Comfort Costs Us is essential reading for leaders and allies who are motivated to dismantle oppressive structures in the workplace and cultivate truly healthy, inclusive environments. Topics and chapters include:

• Talking About Racism Is Hard: How making women of color solely responsible for addressing workplace causes us harm
• Checking the Boxes: Why tokenizing and commodifying women of color impedes true reform
• Exploring the (Invisible) Structural Barriers to Leadership and Leadership Resources
• How White People’s Comfort Often Comes at the Cost of People of Color’s Safety
• Uncovering The Added Burden and Toll of Unpaid and Unseen Emotional Labor
• How we Dismantle Supremacist Scaffolding
• Plus Dimensions of Care, Rest, and Healing

Featuring personal narratives from 10 women of color in leadership and supported by systemic analysis, What Your Comfort Costs Us addresses the pervasive challenges experienced by women of color leaders in their own words—and explores the real-world effects of prioritizing white people's comfort over women of color's material safety. The book also offers practical solutions for any leader looking to transform their workplace culture. By centering empathy and constructive discomfort, What Your Comfort Costs Us provides a roadmap for systemic change, empowering leaders to challenge entrenched power dynamics and cultivate healthier, more inclusive workplaces.

Author Biography

M. Gabriela Alcalde is a public health leader with nearly 3 decades of experience and commitment to equity and social justice. She has worked in the philanthropic, academic, government, nonprofit, and grassroots sectors throughout her career and served in various volunteer capacities. Since 2019, Alcalde has led the Sewall Foundation, a private, independent foundation, as executive director through radical culture change and the integration of environmental, human, and animal wellbeing as the foundation works to center equity and community voices in all their work and strategies. Alcalde regularly speaks and writes locally, nationally, and internationally about shifting the philanthropic and nonprofit sectors, racial equity and justice, and the experience of women of color in leadership. A native of Lima, Peru, she currently lives in Maine with her partner, children, and dog.