Campus Location
Dallas Campus (Online)
Date of Award
8-2025
Document Type
Dissertation
Department
Organizational Leadership
Degree Name
Doctor of Education
Committee Chair or Primary Advisor
Katherine Yeager
Second Committee Member or Secondary Advisor
Misty Resendez Woods
Third Committee Member or Committee Reader
Cynthia M. Sims
Abstract
Black women account for only 3% of the information technology (IT) workforce in the United States, with a lower percentage in leadership roles. This qualitative phenomenological study explored the lived experiences of Black women who had attained leadership roles in the IT field. The researcher examined the opportunities and challenges Black women faced in their recruitment, retention, and advancement to leadership roles. The purpose of the study was to understand the strategies that aided Black women who experienced successful recruitment, advancement, and retention in IT to extract insights that can be leveraged for other Black women. The researcher conducted interviews via Zoom with five participants who were Black women in the United States who had achieved leadership roles in IT. The interview data were analyzed using NVivo software to identify themes from the responses. The key themes from the study results highlighted the impact of education, mentorship and sponsorship, and career advancement challenges on the participants’ journeys to IT leadership roles. Early education played an important role in the recruitment of Black women into the IT field while mentorship and sponsorship were critical to their retention and advancement to leadership roles. The study showed that Black women faced several challenges with getting promoted to leadership roles despite being well-qualified due to bias and inadequate HR processes. The study findings add to existing literature on how Black women attain leadership roles in IT. To address the findings, educators and organizations can work together to increase early exposure of Black women to STEM, and also improve recruitment efforts at historically Black colleges and universities. Organizations can also improve career growth opportunities for Black women with intentional coaching and mentoring along with fair promotion practices. There is room for future research to understand the experiences of Black women in specific industries, in younger age brackets, or those with early STEM exposure to get more robust findings that will continue to inform the study topic. Gaining more insights into this study topic can help improve the representation of Black women in IT but more importantly can help address the talent pipeline issue facing the IT industry.
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License.
Recommended Citation
Adedeji, Adepeju, "Black Women in Information Technology Leadership Roles: Examining Their Experiences With Recruitment, Retention, and Advancement" (2025). Digital Commons @ ACU, Electronic Theses and Dissertations. Paper 926.
https://digitalcommons.acu.edu/etd/926