What Your Comfort Costs Us
How Women of Color Reimagine Leadership to Transform Workplace Culture
Based on the author’s first-hand experiences as a minoritized leader in the predominantly white worlds of nonprofit and philanthropy, What Your Comfort Costs Us brings to life the stories of dozens of women of color leaders in nonprofit, philanthropy, and higher education to deliver engaging and accessible personal stories, lessons, and recommendations.
Each chapter foregrounds stories highlighting a theme and connecting lessons for a healthier, more inclusive, supportive work culture for all.
Publisher: North Atlantic Books
Book Release on March 11, 2025
About the book…
What Your Comfort Costs Us builds on and moves beyond existing literature centering the experiences of women of color by identifying oppressive workplace patterns, addressing the need for structural and systemic change in workplace cultures, and articulating ways for transformative leadership to thrive. Through an intentional cross-sector focus, Your Comfort moves beyond books that suggest that toxic cultures and experiences are exclusive to any one sector or community and facilitates an understanding of patterns of workplace toxicity and possible solutions across contexts. The author invites us to learn beyond our experiences as she shares her stories and the stories of dozens of other women of color leaders in nonprofit, philanthropy, and higher education. What Your Comfort Costs Us delivers engaging and accessible personal stories, lessons, and recommendations. Each chapter foregrounds stories highlighting a theme and connecting lessons for a healthier, more inclusive, supportive work environment.
“What Your Comfort Costs Us is part personal story, part collective witnessing, and a challenge to workplaces—particularly those in the third sector—to step up.
Dr. Alcalde has beautifully executed the addition of an important critique to the growing literature on white supremacy in the workplace. Yet this book is for all of us who work, regardless of our racial background or gender expression, regardless of whether we have harmed others or been harmed.
Most compelling was Dr. Alcalde’s interrogation of workplace infrastructure itself and the invitation to dream up new models for getting things done. Can we imagine self-managed workplaces? Can we imagine workplaces rooted in Indigenous wisdom alive in social philosophies like buen vivir?
Dr. Alcalde invites us to take a hard look at the workplaces we have inherited and experiment our way into a future where work looks nothing like it does today.”
— Yanique Redwood, PhD, author of White Women Cry and Call Me Angry.
“Gabriela's book, What Your Comfort Costs Us, is part of an emerging and damning narrative about the experiences of women of color in leadership. Though race/ethnicity and gender are key shapers of how much power society thinks women of color should be able to wield, it is a woefully understudied area in leadership.
The last few years saw an opening into leadership as organizations struggling with inequality tapped women of color to lead during extremely tumultuous times, with little support and heightened expectations.
Now, a few years later, these leaders have horror stories to tell about their experiences, and they are breaking the rules in telling them. They also tell us what they need to be supported.
I'm sure this book will take its rightful place in the leadership canon.”
—Cyndi Suarez, author of The Power Manual: How to Master Complex Power Dynamics, former president and editor-in-chief, Nonprofit Quarterly,
“Gabriela Alcalde celebrates the collective journeys of women whose identities span the Global Cultural Diaspora to complete a nuanced perspective about the state of workplace dynamics within contemporary American institutions.
With a mixture of rigor, care, and self-reflection, Gabriela showcases the real-life experiences of women of color serving in leadership roles, including herself, who have navigated nonprofit, philanthropic, & higher education workplaces in recent years.
With unflinching detail, she outlines examples of recurring challenges within organizational hierarchies using firsthand accounts from women of color, providing a rare platform for a cohort whose voices have only recently been elevated within the mainstream discourse to tell their own stories. ”