Chief Diversity Officer: A Case Study

I should reconsider my career choice of a chief diversity officer. The article, Experiences of Women of Color University Chief Diversity Officers (Nixon, M. L., 2016) uncovered the immense pressures both personally and professionally that women of color face in their quest to serve as catalyst for diversity in institutions of higher learning. The qualitative study conducted semi structured interviews with five women of color and to determine if the equities experienced relating to being chief diversity officers were a result of their race, gender or an intersectionality of both. The article explores the idea that these women often were in roles of leadership, by virtue of title, however their social identities as women of color and profession isolated them to being outsiders to the institution as a whole (Nixon, 2016). Women of color are more likely to be appointed chief diversity officers, however these tend to be token appointments with minimal authority and extraordinary performance standards. …show more content…
According to Nixon, women of color who are CDOs are given the insurmountable task of creating a plan of diversity, however they have little authority to enforce or mandate real institution change (2016). In my opinion, this idea is a factual account of the role of CDO. For example, most of the women that were interviewed denoted issues of isolation, lack of support by leadership and colleagues. As a group collectively, the women had to think ahead to gain allies, build strategies, anticipate, counter and redirect resistance to accomplish their goals (Nixon 2016)) The requirement is constantly maneuver each move in an indication that there is no full autonomy in their role of leadership. They are really at the mercy of those around them, even in the requirement to move the universities