From Networking to Collective Care: Rethinking Leadership for Womxn in Student Affairs

In student affairs, professional development conversations often begin with familiar advice: build your network, find a mentor, and position yourself for leadership opportunities. While these forms of support matter, my research challenged me to think more deeply about what womxn in higher education truly need in order to thrive, not just advance.

My dissertation research with senior South Asian womxn leaders in academia explored the lived experiences, relationships, and cultural capital that shaped their leadership journeys. Across institutions, roles, and career stages, one insight surfaced consistently: leadership was not experienced as an individual pursuit. It was relational, collective, and sustained through community.

Participants described leadership development as something made possible by people who reminded them they belonged, advocated for them behind closed doors, and offered grounding during moments of doubt or institutional friction. Their stories challenged leadership narratives centered on individual achievement and instead highlighted leadership as a practice of collective care.

As one participant shared:
"This work is difficult and there's a lot of headwinds that come at us... just having some ability to connect with people on a human level helps us not only normalize negativity but devise strategies for moving forward together and having a space and sense of collective care."

This idea of collective care reframed what leadership support looks like in practice. It is not simply access to mentors or professional contacts. It is the relationships that sustain people through complexity, uncertainty, and the often-invisible labor of leadership, especially in environments where womxn’s contributions are often both essential and underrecognized.

Oftentimes, professional development is framed through a transactional lens. For instance, networking becomes an exchange of contacts and mentorship becomes a formal structure that may not translate into meaningful support. Even “building your network” is frequently framed as individual brand-building rather than community-building. What participants in my study described was something more expansive and more human. For them, support looked like colleagues recommending them for opportunities they didn’t apply for, peers checking in after difficult meetings, and cultures that valued their full identities without requiring any edits for credibility.

Despite serving as deans, vice presidents, provosts, and vice chancellors, participants emphasized that leadership sustainability was not rooted in individual resilience alone. It was rooted in relational ecosystems that reflected allyship as an ongoing practice rather than symbolic presence, and relationships that extend beyond institutional boundaries and professional titles.
These insights deeply resonate with my own experience in student affairs, where relational labor is both constant and often invisible. Womxn in our field regularly mentor students, support colleagues, navigate crises, and sustain institutional culture in ways that are rarely fully acknowledged in formal evaluations of leadership. Yet when we talk about leadership preparation, we often default to individual competencies rather than relational conditions.

This is where I see an opportunity to rethink how we conceptualize support systems in higher education. In my dissertation, I developed a conceptual leadership framework, Forging New Pathways, grounded in three interconnected tenets: Cultural Strengths, Redefining Mentorship, and Collective Action.

Cultural Strengths recognizes bicultural perspectives, adaptability, resilience, and intergenerational knowledge as leadership assets. Rather than viewing identity as something to navigate around, this tenet positions cultural wealth as a source of insight, strength, and leadership capacity for womxn, especially womxn of color.

Redefining Mentorship calls for moving beyond traditional, hierarchical models of mentorship toward more culturally conscious and community-centered approaches. Meaningful support extends beyond career advice and includes identity affirmation, shared cultural understanding, access to informal knowledge, and spaces where individuals feel seen and validated. Rather than relying solely on one-on-one mentoring relationships, this tenet highlights the importance of networks of support and care.

Collective Action expands leadership development beyond individual advancement and toward community responsibility. Participants felt the need for stronger leadership pipelines, intentional networking spaces, and support systems. This tenet recognizes that sustainable change happens when individuals come together to advocate for one another, challenge inequitable structures, and create opportunities for those who follow. Leadership, in this sense, becomes both a personal journey and a collective commitment.

Taken together, Forging New Pathways reframes leadership not as an individual trajectory, but as a relational and cultural ecosystem grounded in identity, community, and shared responsibility.

Professional communities such as NASPA and WISA demonstrate what these ecosystems can look like in practice. Some of the most meaningful professional moments in my own journey have come not from formal trainings, but from authentic conversations, enduring relationships, and spaces that encouraged connection over performance.

As we think about the future of leadership in student affairs, the question is not simply: How are we preparing womxn to navigate existing systems? Perhaps the question is: How might we intentionally cultivate environments where leadership feels sustainable, relational, and grounded in collective responsibility?

When we move beyond networking as a strategy and toward collective care as a practice, leadership development becomes something shared rather than solitary. In doing so, we move beyond preparing womxn to survive existing systems and begin creating conditions where they can lead, belong, and thrive.

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Dr. Savneet K. Bains is the Program Manager for Industry Experiences in the Office of Career & Life Design at The University of Texas at Austin, where she supports advanced degree graduate students with experiential learning opportunities and industry engagement. With over 10 years of experience across the industry and higher education, she is passionate about career exploration, student success, and leadership development. Savneet earned her Ph.D. in Educational Leadership and Policy from The University of Texas at Austin, an MBA in Finance and Marketing, and a bachelor’s degree in commerce with Economics honors from India.