The Problem The COVID-19 pandemic caused many workers to move from brick and mortar buildings to virtual/remote environments. This created situations in which workers were forced to not only work virtually, but to work alone. The lack of physical contact with others has the potential to stifle efforts to remain engaged and consequently impede career development and progress. The Solution Virtual mentoring is essential for providing emotional support, creating opportunities for dialogue, helping employees discover a balance between work and life, implementing a reward system, and enhancing an overall sense of well-being and belongingness for employees working in virtual/remote environments. Self-efficacy, a component of social learning theory, is a useful concept to study virtual/remote workers who often become self-empowered and rely on their own cognitive abilities to perform in a virtual/remote environment to ensure successful career outcomes. The Stakeholders HRD professionals, managers, supervisors, and others involved in ensuring that workers are engaged, supported, and continuously building skills while working virtually.

The Problem Colorism is a preference for light skin tones and devaluing of dark skin. It is a genderized phenomenon, mostly affecting women, that creates social and workplace inequities and negatively affects women of color. In India, colorism is a customary practice perpetuated by cultural beliefs and values, social institutions, and the media. Although studies explore colorism among women of color within workplaces in the United States, qualitative research on the impact of colorism on career aspirations and opportunities of women of color abroad appears to be non-existent. The Solution Providing education about the impact of colorism on Indian women to HRD professionals can assist with the empowerment of women and address workplace inequalities based on skin tone. The Stakeholders As today’s global workforce is composed of people of color from various countries, and their cultural values affect their career aspirations and opportunities, human resource development professionals must understand the implications of colorism, particularly in countries where women are less empowered to challenge cultural beliefs and develop skills to address and prevent related workplace issues. The purpose of this article is to discuss how six India-born women experience colorism to increase awareness, fill the gap in the literature, and provide suggestions for engendering Indian women’s career empowerment.

The Problem. The ability of organizations to realize diversity remains problematic. To meet the needs of the modern workforce, new diversity and leadership approaches are required. The Solution. Diversity intelligence, a promising new human resource development (HRD) tool, leads to enhanced inclusion and equitable treatment in the workplace. Several propositions herein advance that diversity intelligence is an antecedent to the compassionate love servant leadership model. The author describes the potential value diversity intelligent servant leaders provide to society, organizations, leaders, and especially employees with protected class status. This article addresses the implications of the propositions to theory and explores the intersection of servant leadership and diversity and inclusion research streams, practice describes how organizations and HRD professionals can benefit from and implement these arguments, and social impact discusses the benefits society can accrue when all organizational members are engaged, productive and valued. The Stakeholders. This article benefits organizations, leaders, employees, and HRD professionals as well as leadership and diversity and inclusion scholars and practitioners.

This study examined whether women and men who were more skilled in one leadership style—servant, transformational, transactional, or passive avoidant—were better mentors and assessed if gender influenced leadership style or mentoring. Faculty (n = 56) who were members of one of two cohorts, participated in leadership development programs focused on gender equity at a university in the southeast U.S. The study used a quantitative cross‐sectional survey design and the units of analysis were individual program participants. Initial regression analysis revealed servant leadership was positively and statistically associated with mentoring and passive avoidant leadership was negatively and statistically associated with mentoring. Transformational and transactional leadership were not statistically associated with mentor competency. Gender was not found to be associated with leadership style or mentoring. Human Resource Development professionals and those who conduct gender equity and other leadership development programs should consider the benefits of servant leadership due to its gender‐neutral style and synergistic ability to develop leaders as skilled mentors.

This conceptual paper addresses a unique niche. We summarize the qualitative, quantitative and theoretical research specific to African American women in leadership. Using an intersectional lens of race, gender and leadership identity, we revisit the seminal work of Parker and ogilvie's (1996) model of African American Women Executive Leadership to determine support for the model in theory and practice. We conclude by suggesting updates to Parker and ogilvie's model and discuss the future research needed to address this neglected demographic. This enhances leadership and diversity research and provides much needed recommendations on how to support diversity leadership in organizations.