Challenging the Glass Ceiling for Racialized Women in Leadership

About this episode

This episode features a conversation about the challenges and opportunities for racialized women in leadership roles.

Breaking the Ceiling, Building the Future Leadership often asks you to walk paths no one made for you. In this episode of From Our Vantage Point, host Maria Turnbull brings three extraordinary voices together: Zahra Esmail, Pablita Thomas, and Paromita (Mita) Naidu. What emerges is a raw, urgent, hopeful conversation about what it takes for racialized women to lead—and to remake the systems around them. Pablita Thomas, Vantage Point's Board Chair, brings the precision of a seasoned executive. As the Executive Director of the BC Hospice Palliative Care Association, she is known in the sector as a “non-profit fixer,” someone who steps into complexity and forges clarity. With experience in advocacy, public health frameworks, and fund development, she shows how leadership is both a craft and a calling. Paromita (Mita) Naidu, Board Member at Vantage Point, offers a voice rooted in intersectionality. A scholar-practitioner, writer, and thinker, she has spoken and written widely about equity, justice, and how workplaces can become sites of belonging, not just inclusion. She challenges us to see leadership not as individual ascent, but as collective transformation. Zahra, our CEO, has…

People in this episode

Guests: Zahra Esmail, Pablita Thomas, Paromita Naidu

Topics covered

• leadership
• racial equity
• non-profit management
• women in leadership
• intersectionality

Keywords

• glass ceiling
• collective transformation
• equity
• justice
• non-profit sector
• advocacy
• public health
• fund development
• belonging
• inclusion

Mentioned in this episode

Books & works: Building the Future Leadership, From Our Vantage Point, Challenging the Glass Ceiling for Racialized Women in Leadership

Places: Vancouver

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