Dr. Kerry Mitchell Brown on Revolutionary Leadership for Black Women

Dr. Kerry Mitchell Brown joins The Authority Company Podcast to discuss her book Revolutionary Leadership: A Power Playbook for Black Women and the urgent need to rethink how leadership is recognized, developed, and supported.

In this conversation, Dr. Brown explains why Black women remain underrepresented in top executive roles, how traditional leadership systems often miss the skills Black women already bring, and why organizations need to redesign advancement systems instead of relying on performative programs.

Joe and Dr. Brown also explore the power of representation, the difference between networking and “friend-raising,” how caregiving builds real leadership capability, and what leaders should stop doing if they genuinely want to cultivate Black women leaders.

This episode is a powerful conversation about equity, leadership, community, systems change, and the future of work.

What You’ll Learn

• Why Black women make up nearly 8% of the U.S. population but hold just over 1% of top executive leadership jobs.
• Why representation matters when people are trying to imagine themselves in positions of power.
• How leadership systems can be redesigned instead of patched with short-term programs.
• Why caregiving develops many of the same skills organizations claim to value in executives.
• How “friend-raising” creates deeper, longer-term relationships than traditional networking.
• What leaders should stop doing if they want to support Black women’s advancement.

Chapters

00:00 Introduction to Dr. Kerry Mitchell Brown
00:56 The leadership gap for Black women
02:19 Why representation matters
03:01 The pipeline problem in leadership
04:04 Why systems need redesign
05:23 Becoming a revolutionary pathmaker
06:25 How to redesign broken systems
07:31 What traditional leadership models get wrong
09:46 Friend-raising vs. networking
11:41 The transactional truth about networking
13:00 Why thriving together creates power
14:08 What has changed for Black women leaders
15:05 Caregiving as leadership training
17:48 How caregiving builds empathy
18:58 Why community matters more than ever
20:18 How mobility changed community
22:43 Building community with intention
24:26 How adults can practice friend-raising
28:32 Friend-raising in business
30:46 What leaders should stop doing
32:05 Why leaders need to talk to people directly
33:28 Why exit interviews come too late
33:53 Why Dr. Brown dedicated the book to her daughters
34:53 Closing thoughts