Leadership for Social Change: The Women's Intercultural Leadership Model

Bonnie Bazata, M.A., Erin Crawford Cressy, Ph.D., Kimberlie Warren, Ph.D., M.P.A., Joy Evans, MSW

Bonnie Bazata is the first executive director of the St. Joseph County Bridges Out of Poverty Initiative which began in November, 2008. Prior to this, she was Associate Director for the Center for Women's Intercultural Leadership at Saint Mary's College where she helped start the Center in 2002 and developed signature programs to support culturally competent women's leadership. Bonnie has a masters degree in bilingual/multicultural education from the University of Arizona. Her undergraduate degree is in political science and communications from Antioch College and she has a certidicate in elementary education from Prescott College.

Erin Crawford Cressy is a founding partner and consultant with CatalystLead Consulting Group, LLC. CatalystLead focuses on developing leaders for the 21st century via diversity and women's leadership training and consulting. Prior to founding CatalystLead, Erin was an adjunct instructor in Psychology and Anthropology at Saint Mary's College. She also served as a research consultant at the Center for Women's Intercultural Leadership (CWIL) for several years. Erin's doctoral degree is in Social Psychology and Women's Studies from Miami University in Oxford, Ohio. Her undergraduate degree is in Psychology from the University of Dayton.

Kimberlie Warren received her doctoral degree in Health and Human Behavior through independent study from Walden University. She attained both her graduate (M.P.A.) and undergraduate (B.G.S.) degrees from Indiana University South Bend. She has attended certifications in various allied health professions and is a past fellow of the Mid-America Regional Public Health Institute. Her main interests are promoting social justice through health disparities education and reduction, individual, group, and community empowerment and advocacy, women's leadership, community-based and participatory processes, and applied, action-oriented research. Currently Kimberlie is project coordinator of a healthy homes demonstration project at Memorial Hospital, South Bend, Indiana.

Joy Evans is the Assistant Director of the Women's Resources and Research Center at the University of California, Davis. In this role she manages the center's internal workings, budgets, program direction and resource development. She strives to create spaces where every student, staff and faculty member feels they can be their authentic self and thrive at the University regardless of their sex, gender identity, or sexual orientation. Previously, she was the Assistant Director for Scholarship and Research at the Center for Women's Intercultural Leadership at Saint Mary's College where she conducted research and developed programs for women to recognize their unique leadership potential, to expand their intercultural skills, and to practice their personal agency. Joy received her MSW from the University of Michigan and her self-designated B.S. in Cross-Cultural Perspectives on Gender from Vanderbilt University.

Abstract: 

The Center for Women's Intercultural Leadership at Saint Mary's College embraces the idea that diversity is a virtue, a strength, and an aspiration. The pedagogy of the Women's Intercultural Leadership model includes eight pedagogical elements that are combined in a synergistic model. These elements are explained in detail, along with key theoretical foundations of the work, and the six proficiency areas that inform much of the Center for Women's Intercultural Leadership's current programming.

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 Leadership for Social Change:
The Women’s Intercultural Leadership Model
Saint Mary’s College, Notre Dame, IN

Bonnie Bazata, M.A.
Erin Crawford Cressy, Ph.D
Kimberlie J. Warren, Ph.D., M.P.A.
Joy Evans, MSW


Acknowledgements

With deep gratitude, we thank the many women who have helped to inform, create and enact the Women’s Intercultural Leadership model at the Center for Women’s Intercultural Leadership (CWIL) at Saint Mary’s College.  Unfortunately these amazing and inspiring women are far too many to name individually, but their powerful and heart-felt contributions have made this work possible and continue to inform our efforts on a daily basis.  These women include participants and planners of CWIL’s Catalyst Trips, in the Women in Leader in Community Organizations project, at the Wellsprings of Wisdom Conferences, and in the praxis research group.  We’d also like to offer sincere gratitude to the staff and administrators at Saint Mary’s College, and to all current and past members of the CWIL leadership team.        

We would like to dedicate this article to one woman in particular, Mary Boykins, who passed away on Valentine's Day of 2010.  As an African-American community leader whom we came to know in her 70’s, Mary was an inspirational leader and mentor who participated in many CWIL leadership programs, most particularly the Catalyst Trip.  She had a broad knowledge of history and politics, as well as profound lived experiences, and she shared these freely with Saint Mary's students and other participants.  One year, after a particularly powerful learning experience, the students recognized her with an "honorary degree" from Saint Mary's.  Those extraordinary moments are the best expressions of the intercultural leadership development that we attempt to describe in this article. Mary was a role model to all and her legacy will live within the memories and lives of the women she touched.  Our enduring love and appreciation to Mary and her family.

Preface

From its inception, the Center for Women’s Intercultural Leadership (CWIL) at Saint Mary’s College has taken the position that the problems of the 21st century require leadership that purposefully seeks to be informed by and situated within the experience and lens of gender and culture.  CWIL asserts that the whole of women’s intercultural leadership is more than the sum of its parts: women’s empowerment, intercultural competence, and various approaches to leadership.  CWIL goes one step further to embrace the idea that diversity is a virtue, a strength and an aspiration.  Therefore, we cultivate leadership that brings everyone to the table and builds bridges across the social barriers that continue to divide and alienate people from one another.  CWIL strives to provide opportunities for women to understand that they are the next generation of leaders, whether they are in their career field or a stay-at-home mom, whether they are in professional roles or in their neighborhood. 

We believe women will lead the transformational change that is necessary to strengthen our communities, create healthier individuals and organizations, and liberate our planet and our psyches from the damage we have collectively inflicted.  We hope that our efforts, including our leadership programs, conferences, and journal will make a contribution to shaping those leaders. 

CWIL is proud of our multi-dimensional student intercultural leadership work, which has as its highest attainment a rigorous process that culminates in an Intercultural Leadership Certificate.  This program came together through the blending of an innovative Women’s Intercultural Leadership model (WIL Model), described in the article that follows, with an intensive review of college-based programs around the country that focused on leadership, women’s studies and cultural awareness.

What follows is a detailed description of our Women’s Intercultural Leadership Model and an overview of the theory that supports it.  This model is unique in that it demands a focus on women and a focus on diversity.  As will be discussed, other models have offered individual components somewhat similar to our model, but none so specifically focus on women and diversity, nor do they pull together the eight pedagogical elements we offer for program design and implementation.  This model is rooted in the collaborative efforts of the women who have been connected with CWIL over the last six years; thus it is unique in its content and unique in the process through which it was founded.  It is our hope that this work will be useful and transformative in your own theory and practice. 

Background

The Center for Women’s Intercultural Leadership at Saint Mary’s College was established in 2001 with a generous grant from the Lilly Endowment, Inc.  The goal of the center is to foster the development of intercultural knowledge and competence critical to educating the next generation of women leaders.  As the CWIL mission states:

The Center for Women's Intercultural Leadership (CWIL) advances Saint Mary's College's mission of “preparing students to make a difference in the world” by empowering women to realize their call to leadership and to develop the intercultural knowledge and competence critical in today’s increasingly interdependent world.  (Mission and philosophy statement, n.d.)

When CWIL was established it consisted of three core areas: International and Intercultural Learning; Research and Scholarship; and Community Connections.  The Community Connections area of CWIL was established to bridge the community/academic divide, and the development of the WIL model initially grew out of this effort. 

In 2004 the model began to develop as a result of the Community Connections programs which fostered unique collaborations between Saint Mary's College and the local community.  These programs, including the Wellsprings of Wisdom Conference and the Catalyst Trip[i], were created by then director of Community Connections Bonnie Bazata.  After several years of highly successful programming, Bonnie brought together twenty-four women who had been participants in a variety of CWIL programs and created a praxis group.  The praxis group consisted of students, staff, faculty, and community women representing a wide range of ages, languages, religions, ethnicities, cultures, educational backgrounds, professions, and life experiences.  The goal of the praxis group was to identify the elements that made the CWIL community programs a success.  The group identified eight key elements.  These elements described how the women were developing their potential as change agents due to their experiences of transformative intercultural engagement.  CWIL understands intercultural engagement to consist of two essential parts which combine to result in growth: one is interacting across the boundaries that define identities, circumscribe participation, and shape encounters, and the other is reflection on and interpretation of the complexities of those interactions.

Following the identification and elaboration of the elements by the praxis group, a team of four researchers collaborated on an in-depth qualitative research project to further examine the eight elements.  Based on interviews with 37 women who had participated in Community Connections’ programs, detailed information about the presence and impact of the model elements was gathered. 

When the praxis group’s identified elements and the qualitative interview data were coded and synthesized, a clear and powerful model for the development of Women’s Intercultural Leadership emerged.  CWIL began piloting training programs for women’s intercultural leadership based on this model in the United States and Australia.  While it should be recognized that this model was created based on the social context of the United States, participant feedback has indicated that both the national and international programs were successful. 

Information gained from the praxis group, the qualitative research project, and experiences applying the model over the six years from 2003-2009 have been integrated into the current article.   An overview of the theoretical foundations of the model is presented, followed by discussion of the eight pedagogical elements and the key values underlying the WIL Model.  The article ends with an explanation of the six proficiency areas that were distilled from the eight pedagogical elements and are currently being used by CWIL to define women’s intercultural leadership in the process of educating emerging leaders themselves.