An amazing future is possible if women in higher education, regardless of race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, disability, and religion, would work together in all our diversity for the continued transformation of higher education. This century requires a new kind of leadership that must be inclusive if we are to build on the legacy and gains of the last century.

I find it impossible not to think about our leadership as women in higher education without thinking about it in the context of my own Chicana identity and the journey I have personally taken over the last thirty years. Sorting through thirty years of letters, memos, speeches, news articles, cards, syllabi, proposals, reports, certificates, and photos brought some semblance of clarity to my career path.

I came to appreciate how circumstances, events, and situations prompted my generation, especially women and people of color, to become involved in making our campuses diverse and developing programs to meet the needs of women and people of color. No one spoke to us about the need for us to give back to our communities; we just did. The willingness to assume responsibility, often at great risk, has always been a characteristic of women leaders I admire.

The greatest gains I have made were achieved by working with allies toward common goals, but this process was often fraught with difficulty. While working on issues affecting women of color through the Women's Resource & Action Center at The University of Iowa, we realized that we first needed to address our own bias within the context of race, gender, sexuality, religion, class, and ethnicity if we were to work together successfully. We learned to understand the different experiences each of us brought to the group, and that these experiences often resulted in different perceptions about how to achieve our goals.

It is becoming clearer to me that many women who became leaders on our campuses were effective for a number of reasons. They were not afraid of change if it was about a greater good. They were open to new ways of knowing. They sought multiple perspectives. They knew when to follow and lead without being territorial. They promoted broad-based input to build community. They had a strong sense of self as women and valued individual group identity. Finally, they understood that true transformation is about changing the infrastructure of institutions from policies to academic programs.

Because of our participation in our various leadership roles as union workers, students, staff, faculty, and senior administrators, campuses are forever changed. This happened through the brave leadership of women at every level of the academy who took risks to challenge the traditional norms and canons about education as well as policies that limited access and success.

Since my arrival in higher education, I have witnessed the transformation of campuses because of our diversity. The rise of women alone on college campuses has made a significant difference in the way our campuses look and act today. The curriculum has become more diverse because of ethnic and women studies and, more recently, GLBT & Disability Studies. As our classrooms have become more diverse with women, students of color, disabled, and GLBT students that these changes have required pedagogical changes. Employee benefit policies, from maternity leaves to daycare opportunities, are a matter of course on many campuses today.

We have also helped to ensure that admission policies, financial aid, and other student service functions and policies have enhanced the participation of diverse groups. Diversity training efforts based on gender, racial/ethnic, sexual orientation, religious, and disability discrimination are a matter of course on many campuses. Pipeline efforts have become common practice on college campuses through programs focusing on math, engineering, and science to leadership training to enhance confidence in young female students about what is possible in their lives

Perhaps the most obvious but overlooked benefit is that these changes have served to benefit all people, not just women and people of color. These changes happened not because we were necessarily in senior positions, but because we assumed leadership as students, faculty, and staff, regardless of our place in the academy, and we perservered in the face of adversity and resistance to challenging traditional ways of doing business.

The transformation is far from complete, and these issues are especially significant in light of the challenges to civil rights today, particularly affirmative action and Title IX. There are many who believe the status of women is secure because of the gains women have made in higher education, and some refer to the "feminization" of higher education. Johnnetta Cole aptly said in her opening remarks launching the National Teleconference for Women in Higher in Education in March 2000, "The men are vanishing in higher education but their hold on power has not sufficiently loosened."

Working together in a multicultural context is the key to the future. It was what moved me to work on the National Teleconference for Women in 2000. I believed that through this conference we could model how diverse women could come together to develop an educational agenda for the 21st Century.

I was asked during the closing panel why the conference was so diverse. I responded by saying that we brought diversity to the planning of the conference from the very beginning. By working together toward a common goal, we developed a gathering that reflected all of our diversity as women. Leaders need to embrace this concept if we are to continue transforming higher education.

The National Teleconference provided the basis for the National Initiative for Women in Higher Education to function as a unique alliance promoting a multicultural women-led agenda for the sustained transformation of higher education for the 21st Century.

Working together is never easy, but as we begin to grapple with our differences, we learn. Through the struggle we find points of connection. Through the struggle we discover and rediscover new and different ways of looking at issues and ourselves. From meeting these kinds of challenges, we are better able to meet the needs of those we serve and become leaders who sustain the ongoing transformation of higher education.

We know that if we are curious rather than judgmental about our differences, we discover richness and new opportunities, and our fear of difference is abated. When fear of difference has control over us, difference is hierarchically arranged, and we all lose. As we identify the threads of commonality embodied in the complex weaving of our human experience through our leadership, we can provide a model from which we can achieve great things.

We should never back away from difficult issues. The challenge lies in not allowing our differences to polarize us. We must appreciate the diversity and uniqueness of our experiences and interpretations of the world within our community. This is how we will discover those points that connect us, and this is how we will accomplish our goals.

The world we live in requires us to have a deeper and more complex understanding of differences, and it is through the expression of our multiple voices that the complexities of the human experience can begin to be addressed. We have to have the courage to change our thinking as we listen to new voices in the academy that are seeking our guidance and wisdom.