The World Is Looking More Colorful

We are more than a year away from our country’s next Presidential Election and it is clear that the playing field is very crowded. However, what is different this time around is that we have more women, and women of color looking to be the President of the United States. Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, Sen. Elizabeth Warren, Sen. Amy Klobuchar, Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand and Sen. Kamala Harris have all thrown their hat in the ring thus far.

Yet it is women like Senator Kamala Harris and Representative Tulsi Gabbard that I am most excited about, not because of their views but because they are women of color that look like me. Growing up most of the people that I knew who were in positions of influence were not women of color. I was in the 7^th grade before I had my first exposure to a teacher who was a woman of color, those experiences continued to grow when I was in high school, but when I went to college those experiences seemed to regress. For the past 20 years that I have been working in the education non-profit sector, there is a gap when it comes to women leaders of color. However, it seems over the course of the last decade we are experiencing a very different wave, where our young ladies for the first time are seeing waves of women of color taking on leadership roles in education, business, tech and politics. A majority of these women are first generation or have immigrant heritage and they are saying unapologetically “I Am Here.”

March is Women’s History Month, and March 8^th is known globally as International Women’s Day, as a woman of color I am more excited now than I think I have ever been about how many of us are ready to take on the challenging role that comes with leadership. Every woman has her own successes and failures, but what is emerging for many of us is that we are owning our failures and not letting it define us. We are in an era where speaking up and pulling our chairs to the table are more important to the current and future generations. From here on out the world needs to know that all women, especially women of color, belong in roles of leadership because their experiences matter.