This presentation describes a qualitative, narrative-based critical autoethnography exploring the development of leadership identities of women leaders, including the author, working in various educational settings. As part of the qualitative data collection, the author interviewed eight leaders in disparate contexts: K-12 administration, university administration, university center directorships, community leadership, state politics, and university coaching. These participants are all female leaders in high-impact areas of education representing diverse leadership contexts and cultural backgrounds. They have varied levels of experience (from two years to over forty years) and work in K-12 schools, universities, politics, research centers, and community non-profit organizations. The researcher layers key findings from these participant stories with her own experiences documented in journal narratives and through previous publications, as well as with dominant US cultural ideologies about leadership, to capture the lived experiences of participants. Perhaps most uniquely, Alsup also understands leadership identity through the lens of the animal-human bond, by integrating personal experience and scholarship about animals and their complex, evolutionary relationships with humans.

This project is grounded in interdisciplinary scholarly research and theory exploring leadership, identity, mentoring, empathy, feminist thought, and animal studies. The project also continues and extends the author’s existing scholarship on professional identity discourses as a pathway to growth.
Alsup’s research aims to better understand the leadership trajectories of women leaders in educational settings and, by extension, inspire and transform young women thinking about leadership to enter so-called “identity portals” and become leaders.

Alsup’s research accomplishes what other books about leadership do not: it combines storytelling and narrative research, contextualized by interdisciplinary scholarship, to better understand how to become, and be, an effective educational leader. This presentation will focus on key aspects of the larger project, including the centrality of empathy/emotional intelligence to strong leadership and how successful leaders approach challenges and failures. The presentation ends with an overview of six practical ‘leadership intelligences’ that mentors, leaders, and would-be leaders can internalize and enact to enrich their leadership lives.

Keywords: Leadership, identity, narrative, animal studies.