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What Your Comfort Costs Us: How Women of Color Reimagine Leadership to Transform Workplace Culture
Leading for survival, leading for liberation—how to uplift women of color, transform cultures of complicity, and upend white supremacy culture at work
Workplace white comfort comes at the safety of women of color—and it costs lives and livelihoods. Microaggressions, structural barriers, unpaid emotional WOC in leadership disproportionately bear the burdens of white supremacist work cultures, even as they’re expected to take charge of reforms. But building better workplaces—less toxic, racist, and misogynistic workplaces—is everyone’s responsibility and for everyone’s benefit. And letting it fall solely to women of color is causing real harm. The stakes are high, and it’s past time for change.
What Your Comfort Costs Us offers essential reading and transparent advice for leaders who are ready to address structural inequity at work. With chapters like “Talking About Racism is Hard,” “Checking the Boxes,” and “Uncovering the Added Burden and Toll of Unpaid and Unseen Emotional Labor,” anti-supremacist philanthropic and nonprofit leader and author M. Gabriela Alcalde challenges us to rethink how we engage power—and take radical action toward reorienting it toward collective liberation.
You’ll
Research-backed analysis and practical solutions to transform workplace culture
How systemic racism and structural violence shows up at work (in ways you may not expect)
What happens when workplaces shift to prioritizing WOC’s material safety over white comfort
Real stories and insights from 10 women of color in leadership
How white allies and accomplices can show up and step up authentically
Interwoven with Alcalde’s own experiences, professional expertise, and proven recommendations on how to do better, this book is a necessary guide to nurturing empathy, challenging complacency, and activating meaningful allyship. Alcalde awakens your potential to transform workplace cultures beyond business-as-usual bandaids, offering critical wisdom for systemic change and authentic collective empowerment at work.
Workplace white comfort comes at the safety of women of color—and it costs lives and livelihoods. Microaggressions, structural barriers, unpaid emotional WOC in leadership disproportionately bear the burdens of white supremacist work cultures, even as they’re expected to take charge of reforms. But building better workplaces—less toxic, racist, and misogynistic workplaces—is everyone’s responsibility and for everyone’s benefit. And letting it fall solely to women of color is causing real harm. The stakes are high, and it’s past time for change.
What Your Comfort Costs Us offers essential reading and transparent advice for leaders who are ready to address structural inequity at work. With chapters like “Talking About Racism is Hard,” “Checking the Boxes,” and “Uncovering the Added Burden and Toll of Unpaid and Unseen Emotional Labor,” anti-supremacist philanthropic and nonprofit leader and author M. Gabriela Alcalde challenges us to rethink how we engage power—and take radical action toward reorienting it toward collective liberation.
You’ll
Research-backed analysis and practical solutions to transform workplace culture
How systemic racism and structural violence shows up at work (in ways you may not expect)
What happens when workplaces shift to prioritizing WOC’s material safety over white comfort
Real stories and insights from 10 women of color in leadership
How white allies and accomplices can show up and step up authentically
Interwoven with Alcalde’s own experiences, professional expertise, and proven recommendations on how to do better, this book is a necessary guide to nurturing empathy, challenging complacency, and activating meaningful allyship. Alcalde awakens your potential to transform workplace cultures beyond business-as-usual bandaids, offering critical wisdom for systemic change and authentic collective empowerment at work.
234 pages, Kindle Edition
Published March 11, 2025
4 people are currently reading
74 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
October 26, 2025
This is the book that I needed in the moment that I found it.
The power of the browse at a public library is comparable to none. I happened to be, after a tough moment at work, browsing the new books section to collect myself, gathering a sense of connection and peace. I picked this book off the shelf, contemplated not taking it several times, and decided after reading a bit of the intro: why not? It felt relevant.
In What Your Comfort Costs Us, appears my life and of so many other women (and men, others) of color that I have met, each of us trying to make a way in workplaces that claim they desire our presence and our skills, while at the same time pushing, reducing, demoralizing us, and making it harder for us to understand our own minds about what we're experiencing. Although many of the situations that people described are not those I experienced, I definitely have had to reduce myself in certain circumstances in order to not intimidate (white) people, who have their own set ideas of who I am and what I can (should) do.
I dove into this book and read it voraciously for a couple of weeks, and then put it on the shelf (until it was overdue, essentially). I think I needed time to process. In the end, I took copious notes and will be considering how my work life tracks with what I read here, and where I'm trying to go. Reading about the people and situations within is validating. Most vitally, the book confirms that I do indeed have a unique approach to work, based on my cultural background and experiences. That's the book's biggest gift to me, and to those I work with.
Appreciating M. Gabriela Alcalde, and the voices she brought together to tell us these important truths.
The power of the browse at a public library is comparable to none. I happened to be, after a tough moment at work, browsing the new books section to collect myself, gathering a sense of connection and peace. I picked this book off the shelf, contemplated not taking it several times, and decided after reading a bit of the intro: why not? It felt relevant.
In What Your Comfort Costs Us, appears my life and of so many other women (and men, others) of color that I have met, each of us trying to make a way in workplaces that claim they desire our presence and our skills, while at the same time pushing, reducing, demoralizing us, and making it harder for us to understand our own minds about what we're experiencing. Although many of the situations that people described are not those I experienced, I definitely have had to reduce myself in certain circumstances in order to not intimidate (white) people, who have their own set ideas of who I am and what I can (should) do.
I dove into this book and read it voraciously for a couple of weeks, and then put it on the shelf (until it was overdue, essentially). I think I needed time to process. In the end, I took copious notes and will be considering how my work life tracks with what I read here, and where I'm trying to go. Reading about the people and situations within is validating. Most vitally, the book confirms that I do indeed have a unique approach to work, based on my cultural background and experiences. That's the book's biggest gift to me, and to those I work with.
Appreciating M. Gabriela Alcalde, and the voices she brought together to tell us these important truths.
May 21, 2025
Good book - focused predominantly in the non-profit space - but with insights that are transferable to any workplace.
July 14, 2025
A really important read for anyone who leads a team or wants to create a more welcoming and equitable workplace.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews