This qualitative study explores the decision-making and navigation strategies of seven current women* leaders of campus-based Women, Gender, and Sexuality Centers (WGSCs) at large public research universities across the United States. With a feminist research design and an intersectional feminist lens, leaders illuminated their own personal transformational journeys as a driving force behind their commitment to equity and inclusion work. Recognizing foundational values and early experiences informs the ways they navigate their environments.

As pivotal hubs for gender equity initiatives, WGSCs also serve as platforms for fostering connections and facilitating collaboration, collective strategies, and partnerships. Drawing on a proposed Applied Critical and Intersectional Feminist Leadership framework, the analysis of findings revealed the innovative and unique insights for negotiating power and positionality within higher education institutions. Given the changing landscape within higher education, women’s center leaders draw upon their own survival strategies to harness solutions to our most complex problems today.

*women - all who experience life through the lens of woman in body, spirit, identity - past, present, future, and fluid (Gender Equity Resource Center, 2019)