Lead from the Outside: How to Build Your Future and Make Real Change

Lead from the Outside is peppered with stories of people who were the first to accomplish a considerable feat: Stacey Abrams’s father, Robert, was a first-generation college graduate. Abrams’s sister Leslie was appointed as a federal judge when she was 39, the first Black woman to have that distinction in Georgia. Shirley Franklin, one of Abrams’s many mentors, was the first woman and the first Black woman to become mayor of Atlanta. Simone Bell, Abrams’s colleague in the Georgia House of Representatives, was the first openly lesbian Black woman to serve in a state legislature. Sam Park, Abrams’s former intern, became the first openly gay man and the first Korean American Democrat to serve in a state legislature. Teresa Wynn Roseborough was the first Black woman to make partner at the law firm where Abrams worked.

Abrams writes that “it’s the twenty-first century and long past time for firsts and seconds” (176). She means that minority leadership remains a novelty as positions of power and consequence are most often held by members of the majority—namely white, straight men. She argues that it takes a great deal of confidence or even defiance for a member of a minority group to aspire to more. Abrams says, “When your goal means you’ll be the first, or one of the few, as I desired, logic tells you that if it were possible, someone else would have done it by now” (51). Part of her motivation for writing a book for minority leaders is to normalize ambition for these communities, to encourage grander goal-setting and dreaming, to inspire belief in their potential, and to offer tools that may increase their odds of success. Moreover, the benefits of minority leadership extend beyond minority communities. Abrams argues for the vital importance of diverse perspectives in the classroom, on the job, on the House floor, and in the White House. As outsiders, minority leaders have a unique lens through which they see the world, a vision shaped by adversity, and the capacity to shake up the status quo through their presence in the seat of power.