Journal Title: Journal of Religious Leadership
Volume & Issue: Vol. 24, No. 2
DOI: DOI forthcoming
Year: 2025
Page Range: 25-58
This essay explores a racial-ethnic-cultural identity development model based on the work of Janet Helms, William Cross, and Beverly Daniel Tatum, influenced by a framing offered by Khyati Joshi and Shanelle Henry. This model facilitates reflection on the following phases of development: implicit and explicit acceptance of societal norms, the experience of disorientation when faced with new awareness, processing implicit and explicit resistance, and the work of reorienting one’s sense of identity leading to generative embodied presence in just action. This essay offers recommendations for personal development of the leadership educator as well as implications for their students and mentees in the classroom and in the community.