Subversive Leadership is the stance, agency, and action to disrupt cultural reproduction. Grounded in doctoral research: four principles, nine orientations.
"Subversive Leadership is the stance, agency, and action to disrupt cultural reproduction, to stop harm that one sees, has seen, or has experienced. Grounded in Dr. Latisha Chisholm's doctoral research at the University of Pennsylvania, the framework emerges from studying how Black school principals in Washington, D.C. disrupt harm in environments not built for their leadership. It is built on four core principles, Dignity Over Conformity, Liberation Over Approval, Community Over Hierarchy, and Transformation Over Navigation, and nine leadership orientations that describe how disruption is enacted with intention, strategy, and discipline.
Here's how I came to build it.
The Trade-Off I Refused to Accept
I spent over a decade developing other people's leadership. Running programs. Facilitating workshops. Watching early-career professionals figure out how to lead within systems that were not built for their success.
And in all that time, I never had a single coaching conversation about my own development.
That's not unusual. That's the rule.
The leadership development industry is a $15 billion market. Executive coaching costs $300+ per hour. But here's what I kept seeing: the professionals who needed development most, early and mid-career leaders working within unfamiliar systems without inherited playbooks, were priced out entirely. You don't get developed until you already have access and privilege. (The Coaching Access Gap Is by Design goes deeper on how that plays out.)
Meanwhile, the ones who did ""make it"" often described a hollow victory. They climbed the ladder, only to realize they'd lost themselves along the way.
I watched this pattern for years. And I started asking: What if there was another way?
Subversive Leadership is my answer. It's a framework for leaders who refuse to accept the trade-off, that success requires shrinking yourself, code-switching, performing a version of yourself that feels foreign to who you actually are.
It's not about rebellion. It's not about burning everything down. It's about leading effectively, authentically, and strategically within structures that may never fully affirm you, while protecting what actually matters for your long-term flourishing.
Origins: Where This Framework Came From
The framework didn't start as a framework. It started as a question I couldn't stop asking.
During my doctoral research at the University of Pennsylvania, I studied Black school principals in Washington, D.C., leaders working within systems built on what scholars call cultural reproduction: the everyday practices that maintain social inequalities, often invisibly.
I wanted to understand: What subversive actions must school leaders take to disrupt these patterns? How does their identity shape how they lead?
What I found was remarkable. These principals couldn't wait for systems to change. They were creating conditions for students and families to thrive, often by working within and against institutional logic at the same time. They were conspiring. Protecting. Preparing children for their own subversive actions.
They were leading authentically in environments that weren't designed for their success. And they were winning, not by escaping the system, but by strategically upgrading it from within.
I realized I was watching a framework in action. One that didn't exist in the leadership books I'd read.
The ""$10,000 and a Title"" Problem
During this research, another pattern became impossible to ignore.
Most organizations reserve executive coaching for senior leaders, people who already have access, privilege, existing networks, and often $10,000 or more in development budget. Meanwhile, the early and mid-career professionals who need development most, those figuring out unfamiliar systems without inherited playbooks, get generic workshops at best.
The message is clear: you don't get developed until you already have access and privilege.
I built Subversive Leader to close that gap, here's the full story of how I built it.
The Four Principles of Subversive Leadership
What I observed in those D.C. principals, and what I've seen in over a decade of developing professionals, distilled into four principles. Each one is a remedy for something traditional leadership takes for granted.
1. Dignity Over Conformity
Traditional leadership requires leaders to shrink. Code-switch. Perform a version of themselves that fits the mold.
Subversive Leadership calls this the Conformity Tax, the personal cost of shrinking yourself to fit in.
You know this tax. It's code-switching, adjusting your language, your behavior, sometimes your whole appearance before you walk into a room. It's covering: downplaying parts of your identity so others feel comfortable. It's the self-censoring, not speaking up in a meeting, waiting to see how everyone else reacts first. It's strategic invisibility: keeping your head down because visibility invites scrutiny. It's the exhausting emotional labor of managing how you're perceived when how you feel is something else entirely. And it's the credentialing tax, over-proving your competence because your credentials are always questioned first.
You pay this tax every day. And most leadership frameworks never even name it.