Abstract
Purpose. The purpose of this study was to explore the paths to leadership of successful Latinas in midmanagement positions in California community colleges. An investigation into how successful Latina leaders make sense of themselves as leaders and as Latinas given the culture that they come from was explored. It is also important to understand how they navigate between the two cultures. Once we understand their successful journey, we will have a better idea how to develop more Latina leaders in order to increase the representation and the number of Latina leadership role models in higher education. Methodology. The subjects included six Latina leaders in midmanagement positions in community colleges. Subjects responded to one research instrument: an interview utilizing 9 semistructured interview questions. Findings. The findings from the interviews indicated that the participants described their route to their leadership roles as challenging. However, their support system, education, networking, and professional development allowed them to defeat all the challenges they encountered along their path to be able to attain their leadership roles. Secondly, the main key for the Latina leaders to effectively navigate the two worlds as Latinas and as Latina leaders came from finding their voice, applying a coping mechanism, and embracing the bicultural identity ingratiation (BII) approach to be able to effectively do cultural frame switching. Conclusions. The overall conclusion is that Latina leaders reflected and learned from their lived experiences to their paths to leadership and made sense of themselves as Latinas and Latina leaders and the worlds they interacted with. Therefore, they approached a conscious transformative learning process to become the effective leaders they have become by having a coping mechanism, finding their voice, and by holding a bicultural identity to navigate and effectively do cultural switch from the work and home culture. Recommendations. Two recommendations are: (a) conduct a similar study with both qualitative and quantitative approaches using mixed methods with a bigger population, perhaps comparing the differences between Latina leaders in urban and rural community colleges, and (b) conduct a further study on Latina leaders' transformational learning process and bicultural identity integration.