How Can Underrepresented Leaders Excel in Public Health Roles

Published July 22nd, 2026

In public health, leadership is more than a role-it is a pathway to shaping equitable systems and amplifying often unheard voices. For Black women and other underrepresented professionals, this journey carries distinct challenges shaped by historical biases and ongoing structural barriers. Yet within these complexities lies profound opportunity: intentional leadership practices can foster empowerment, sharpen visibility, and build resilience in ways that not only advance individual careers but also expand what leadership looks like across the field. Recognizing and cultivating these habits is essential to breaking patterns of invisibility and exclusion that persist in many public health spaces. This conversation invites reflection on leadership as a deliberate practice, one rooted in lived experience and aimed at transforming both organizational culture and health outcomes. By exploring tangible leadership strategies tailored to underrepresented professionals, it becomes possible to navigate uncertainty with confidence and to lead in ways that open doors for others to follow.

Practice 1: Cultivating Empowerment Through Self-Advocacy and Visibility

I learned early in my public health career that quiet excellence did not change the room. My work lived in grant reports and inboxes, while louder voices shaped decisions. The turning point came when I treated self-advocacy as part of the work itself, not an optional add-on.

For Black women and other underrepresented leaders, empowerment begins with naming the value you create. That starts with clear, concrete language. Instead of saying, "I helped with that project," I began saying, "I led the coordination for the maternal health pilot in three districts, which reduced delays in reporting." The facts stayed the same; my ownership did not.

Practice Clear, Fact-Based Self-Advocacy

• Keep a running impact log. Short notes on what you led, influenced, or fixed give you language for reviews, interviews, and chance hallway conversations.
• Share outcomes, not just tasks. Link your work to public health leadership and health equity: improved access, faster data, stronger community trust.
• State your role plainly. Use verbs like "led," "designed," "negotiated," or "secured" instead of "helped" or "supported."

Seek Visible Work, Not Just More Work

I stopped volunteering only for the behind-the-scenes assignments and started asking for roles that put me in decision-making spaces. That shift did not come from bravado; it came from a quiet question: "Where is the room where this choice gets made, and how do I get there?"

• Request a visible role on one strategic project each year-presenting findings, co-authoring a brief, or representing the team in a cross-department meeting.
• Connect your interests to organizational priorities. When you ask to join a project, link it to a clear goal the organization already cares about.

Build Networks That See You And Say Your Name

Self-advocacy grows stronger inside communities that expect you to take up space. I sought mentors who had navigated being the "only" in the room, as well as colleagues committed to strategies to increase diversity in public health leadership. Those relationships shifted my sense of what was possible long before my title changed.

• Join or form affinity spaces for underrepresented public health professionals, even if they are small or informal.
• Engage potential allies directly. When I noticed genuine male allyship to advance women's leadership, I named it and invited those colleagues into equity conversations and project sponsorship.
• Practice saying your goals out loud so others know what opportunities to route your way.

Claiming space and voice is not about ego; it is about alignment. When you advocate for your own visibility, you also expand what leadership looks like for the interns watching, the community partners listening, and the colleagues who have not yet seen someone like you at the table. 

Practice 2: Building Inclusive Leadership That Honors Diverse Perspectives

I remember sitting in a cramped conference room, watching a community liaison hesitate before speaking. The data on the slide told one story; her experience in the field told another. Years earlier, I might have nodded and moved on. That day, I stopped and asked, "What are we missing here?" The conversation that followed reshaped the entire project design. It also reshaped how colleagues saw my leadership.

Inclusive leadership is not a personality trait; it is a set of repeatable behaviors that signal, "Your perspective changes this work." For underrepresented professionals, especially Black women, those behaviors carry double weight. They create safety for others and quietly assert that your presence in the room is about influence, not just attendance.

Lead With Listening That Has Consequences

Active listening becomes powerful when it changes decisions. I learned to:

• Invite specific voices: "I want to pause here and hear from the community outreach staff before we finalize this plan."
• Reflect back what I heard in plain language and confirm it, instead of translating it away in technical terms.
• Document those insights in meeting notes and project plans so they shape budgets, timelines, and indicators.

When people see their input woven into actual choices, psychological safety grows. Over time, colleagues start bringing hard truths to you first, which deepens your informal authority even before titles catch up.

Share Power In How Decisions Get Made

Early in my career, decisions seemed to live in mysterious side conversations. To counter that, I began naming how choices would be made and who would weigh in. For public health teams, that often means:

• Co-designing agendas with at least one person from a different role or background than your own.
• Breaking big decisions into smaller questions and assigning each to mixed groups, not just senior staff.
• Rotating facilitators so that the person guiding the discussion is not always the most senior or the most comfortable speaking.

This kind of collaborative decision-making supports strategies to increase diversity in public health leadership by making influence less dependent on hierarchy and more tied to contribution.

Practice An Equity-Focused Mindset In Daily Choices

An equity lens is not only for strategy documents. I treat it as a simple set of questions I return to often:

• Who is affected by this choice yet not in this room?
• Whose workload increases if this plan moves forward as written?
• What data are missing because of how we usually collect information?

Asking these questions aloud signals that equity is part of standard practice, not a side project. Over time, colleagues start anticipating them and integrating that thinking into their own planning. That shift ties inclusive leadership directly to public health leadership and health equity, not just team harmony.

Visibility Through Inclusion

There is a quiet misconception that focusing on others' voices will dim your own. My experience has been the opposite. When I consistently made space for more perspectives, senior leaders began to associate my name with clear processes, grounded decisions, and fewer blind spots. Inclusive leadership raised my visibility not because I talked more, but because outcomes improved.

This approach also strengthened my networks. People who felt heard in one meeting later flagged opportunities, invited me into design conversations, or recommended me for cross-country collaborations. Inclusion became both an act of solidarity and a strategic way to widen my circle of influence.

As the demands of this kind of leadership increase-holding space for others, naming inequities, standing by unpopular truths-the need for resilience grows. Inclusive practices are not only about how you lead a room; they also shape which rooms you are invited into, and how you sustain yourself once you get there. 

Practice 3: Navigating Bias and Breaking Stereotypes With Strategic Resilience

I spent a season of my career being praised as "reliable" while watching bolder, less prepared colleagues move ahead. I noticed a pattern: when I raised concerns, they were labeled as "emotional" or "difficult." When others said the same thing with less context, it was called "strategic insight." That disconnect did not disappear when I worked harder; it forced me to develop a different kind of resilience.

Stereotypes in public health leadership often show up as subtle patterns, not dramatic incidents. Black women get framed as helpers, not decision-makers. Immigrant colleagues get treated as "community translators," not technical experts. These signals wear on confidence if they go unnamed.

Shift From Proving Yourself To Anchoring Yourself

I stopped chasing an invisible bar of perfection and started asking a grounding question: What type of leader am I choosing to be here? That shift moved me from constant self-defense to intentional presence. Instead of replaying biased comments, I documented my impact, rehearsed one or two clear responses, and chose where my energy would land.

• Prepare short, values-based phrases you can use in the moment, such as, "I want to bring us back to the data," or, "I will share my recommendation as the person who led this work."
• Notice when you are working to disprove a stereotype rather than to advance public health leadership and health equity goals. Redirect your effort toward the outcome, not the stereotype.

Use Mentorship And Training As Strategy, Not Remediation

Bias often whispers that you are the problem. I treated mentorship and bias training as strategic tools, not fixes for my personality. Mentors who understood equity and inclusion in health professions gave me language, context, and options. Bias training, when grounded in real scenarios, equipped me to recognize patterns faster and decide when to address them directly, when to document, and when to escalate.

• Seek mentors who respect your identity and ambition, not just your resume. Ask specifically how they have navigated stereotype-driven assumptions.
• When you attend bias or equity trainings, leave with one concrete behavior you will test in your next meeting, not a vague intention to "be more aware."

Reframe Setbacks As Data, Not Verdicts

Not every missed promotion or sidelined idea is about bias, but bias often shapes the pattern of who gets second chances. I started treating each setback as data for my leadership practice. I asked myself: What did I learn about this institution's unwritten rules? Whose feedback is grounded in growth, and whose reflects their own discomfort with my presence?

• After a disappointing outcome, write down three things: what you controlled, what you did not, and what you will try differently next time.
• Share those reflections with a trusted mentor so they do not live only in your head, where self-doubt can distort them.

Resilience, for underrepresented leaders, is not about absorbing endless harm. It is the quiet discipline of staying aligned with your purpose, protecting your energy, and continuing to lead in ways that widen what inclusive leadership in public health looks like for those coming after you. 

Practice 4: Engaging Allies and Mentors to Expand Leadership Opportunities

When I think about the turning points in my leadership path, few came from solo effort. They came when someone with influence said my name in a room I was not in, when a mentor asked sharper questions than I knew to ask, or when a colleague used their credibility to push back on bias so I did not stand alone.

For underrepresented professionals, especially Black women in public health, external support is not a bonus; it is part of the strategy for staying visible and sustained. Self-advocacy sets your foundations. Allies, mentors, and sponsors extend your reach.

See The Different Roles Clearly

• Allies speak up with you and sometimes instead of you. Male allyship to advance women's leadership matters when men notice who is interrupted, who is credited, and whose expertise is sidelined, then intervene without making it a performance.
• Mentors offer pattern recognition. They translate unwritten norms, share failures, and help you test choices before you make them.
• Sponsors use their political capital. They recommend you for stretch assignments, leadership programs, and global projects you might never hear about directly.

Seek Relationships, Not Rescues

I stopped waiting for the "perfect" mentor and started building a small, mixed circle instead. That meant:

• Asking one leader whose style I respected for a short, focused conversation and ending with, "What is one opportunity you think I should watch for?"
• Connecting with mentors across cultures and disciplines so my thinking about public health leadership did not stay trapped in one institutional lens.
• Noticing who already affirmed my perspective in meetings and following up to say, "I appreciated your support there; I am working toward X role and would value your advice."

Tie Allies To Your Resilience Practice

Engaging allies and mentors is not about outsourcing your agency. It is about multiplying the impact of the self-advocacy and resilience you are already practicing. When you face stereotype-driven pushback, an ally who reinforces your expertise shifts the narrative faster. When you feel worn down, a mentor who remembers your longer arc keeps you from shrinking your goals to match someone else's bias.

Leadership for underrepresented professionals grows at the intersection of inner grounding and outer networks. You anchor yourself; allies, mentors, and sponsors help the room recognize what that leadership already is. 

Practice 5: Advocating for Equity and Leading Public Health Change

Not long ago, I sat in a policy review meeting where the agenda focused on timelines and budget burn rates. Halfway through, a program officer quietly mentioned that clinic staff had started seeing more late-stage cases in one district. No one had built that observation into the slides, so it floated in the air, unclaimed. I remember taking a breath and saying, "If the trend on the ground is shifting, the policy conversation needs to shift with it." That simple interruption turned a routine review into a discussion about transportation barriers, stigma, and resource distribution.

That moment reminded me that leadership in public health is not just about managing projects. It is about deciding which truths enter the formal record and which stay as side comments. For underrepresented professionals, especially Black women, advocating for equity often starts with saying, "This pattern has consequences," and refusing to let it get filed away as an anecdote.

Use Your Role As An Advocacy Platform

I treat every role I hold as a platform, no matter the title. Influence shows up in small, repeatable moves:

• Translating field insights into language that fits policy briefs so community realities shape official decisions, not just informal conversations.
• Flagging when program indicators ignore structural barriers, and proposing at least one measure that speaks to equity, not only volume.
• Asking whose data, whose story, and whose risk is missing before endorsing a new plan.

These are not dramatic acts. They are steady acts of public health leadership and health equity, practiced in rooms that were not designed with you in mind.

Center Communities In How Change Gets Designed

Equity-centered leadership frameworks taught me to stop treating communities as audiences and start treating them as co-architects. That shift looked like:

• Building time and budget for community engagement into project plans from the start, not as a "nice-to-have" if funds remain.
• Inviting community representatives to react to draft materials before they are finalized, then adjusting language, channels, or timelines based on their feedback.
• Sharing back results in formats that feel useful to those who shared their stories, not only in academic journals or internal dashboards.

When community voices shape design, programs move closer to the lived conditions that produce health, not just the indicators that measure it.

Shape Organizational Culture While You Advance Your Career

Equity work also lives inside organizations. I began seeing every meeting, hiring panel, and strategic retreat as a chance to normalize different expectations of leadership:

• Raising questions about who sits on interview panels and how candidates from underrepresented backgrounds are assessed.
• Suggesting that performance metrics include contributions to mentoring, equity initiatives, or community partnerships, not only funding and publications.
• Naming when policies land unevenly across staff, then proposing specific adjustments instead of stopping at critique.

These actions tie personal advancement to cultural change. You are not only seeking a seat at the table; you are reshaping what that table values.

Advocacy, practiced this way, turns leadership into a channel for collective outcomes. Your voice, grounded in experience and purpose, becomes a bridge between marginalized communities, institutional decisions, and the kind of public health change that outlives any single role or title.

The five essential leadership practices-fact-based self-advocacy, seeking visible roles, leading with inclusive listening, cultivating resilience, and using your platform for equity advocacy-form an interconnected framework that empowers underrepresented professionals to transform public health leadership. Each practice builds intentional habits that increase visibility, strengthen influence, and deepen impact, creating space for authentic voices to shape decisions and culture. These habits are not just strategies; they are acts of purpose-driven leadership that expand what is possible for individuals and communities alike. Your journey as a leader in public health holds the power to redefine norms, influence equity, and inspire those who follow. For those ready to explore these leadership dimensions further, I invite you to learn more about speaking engagements, workshops, and advisory sessions designed to support your growth through nontraditional career pathways within a welcoming and authentic environment in Philadelphia and beyond.