Malia Lazu

Across America, organizations are celebrating Women’s History Month, recognizing the cultural, economic, scientific, and social contributions of women in America. There is no shortage of women luminaries from the past. Two personal favorites of mine are Harriett Tubman and Eleanor Roosevelt and, an activist and ally who championed civil and human rights.

But when we look back across history at women in leadership, we see two very different stories: one for white women and one for women of color. The fact is efforts to improve gender diversity have led to gains mostly by white women, as USA Today reported. For women of color, advancement into leadership has taken longer and for no other reason than systemic racism and inherent bias that determines who gets hired, developed and promoted.

There are examples everywhere. In 1981, Sandra Day O’Connor became the first woman to serve on the U.S. Supreme Court – followed far too many years later by the first women of color to sit on the high court. In 2019, Justice Sonia Sotomayor, the first Hispanic and first Latina, was sworn in and, in 2022, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson became the first Black woman to serve on the Supreme Court.

We see a similar pattern in corporate leadership. In 1972, Katharine Graham of the Washington Post became the first woman on the Fortune 500 list of CEOs. The real trailblazer, though, came in 2009 when Ursula Burns of Xerox became the first Black female CEO on that list.

As we look around our organizations today, we see few, if any, people of color in senior leadership – and even fewer women of color. It’s time to change the face of women in leadership to be truly inclusive: BIPOC women, Asian women, LGBTQ women, and women from other underrepresented groups.

Here in Massachusetts, we have three champions who are leading the way, not just for themselves, but also for greater equity for all.

Three Mass. Women Champions

Mayor Michelle Wu, the daughter of Taiwanese immigrants, became the first woman and the first non-white person to lead the city of Boston. As anyone in Boston real estate development, housing and banking knows all too well, Mayor Wu ran on a platform of completely revamping the Boston Planning & Development Agency, which for too long has favored big developers at the expense of our racially and ethnically diverse communities.

Under Mayor Wu, the BPDA is in the process of being transformed, including by updating and modernizing the zoning code; ensuring development (and the approval process) is more transparent and predictable for developers and community members; and using public land for public good, with a focus on affordability.

Gov. Maura Healey made history in 2022 when she (along with Oregon Gov. Tina Kotek) became one of two openly gay governors in the U.S. During in her political career, as the first openly gay state attorney general to be elected in the country, she led the commonwealth’s challenge of the Defense of Marriage Act, which had banned same-sex marriage.

Now among Gov. Healey’s many initiatives is a push to tackle housing costs, and more specifically increasing the supply of affordable housing. The governor and her team are championing the Affordable Homes Act, which aims to create housing for all income levels in the state.

U.S. Rep. Ayanna Pressley proudly calls herself an activist, a legislator, a survivor and the first women of color to be elected to Congress from the commonwealth of Massachusetts. She does not shy away from taking on those in power, including in the banking sector. Last summer, she sent letters to the CEOs of JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, U.S. Bank, Wells Fargo and Citi, asking for a “detailed update” on the commitments to racial equity that these financial institutions had announced so publicly in the wake of George Floyd’s murder in May 2020.

She is calling on these big banks to heal the harm caused, not only historically but also currently in perpetuating the bias and racial inequalities within the banking system.

A Mandate for Change

These strong leaders – all of whom were elected by wide margins – are reminders of what happens when we change the face of women in leadership. Across the public and private sector–including the real estate and financial industries–we need more of these strong women leaders who come from varied backgrounds.

White women rising to the upper echelons of corporate leadership is not enough. Bold, courageous and innovative leadership requires leaders from multiple diverse backgrounds – bringing together the intersectionality of being a woman and being BIPOC, Asian, and LBGTQ. To truly change the face of leadership, women must be united in the cause – with more white women becoming allies to support and champion women of color in leadership.

Malia Lazu is a lecturer at the MIT Sloan School of Management, CEO of The Lazu Group, former Eastern Massachusetts regional president and chief experience and culture officer at Berkshire Bank and the author of “From Intention to Impact: A Practical Guide to Diversity.”