1. Black and minority ethnic leaders: support networks and strategies for success in HE
Professor Kalwant Bhopal and Dr Hazel

2. Introduction
Race Relations Amendment Act (2000); Equality Act (2010); Athena SWAN; Race Equality Charter (ECU).
Increase in BME students at HEIs; Indian and Chinese students more likely to have a degree compared to other BME groups (HEFCE, ).
Inequalities continue to persist despite policy changes and changes in student body (Bhopal and Jackson, 2013; Pilkington, 2013); White applicants three times more likely to secure a professorial post compared to BME candidates (UCU, 2012).

3. Project aims and objectives
Aim: to explore successful career trajectories of BME leaders in HE
Objectives
To provide case study data on the experiences of BME leaders
To examine how BME construct themselves as successful academics
To analyse sources of support and
To influence HE in terms of better support provision for BME career progression
Funded by Leadership Foundation for Higher Education (June 2016)

4. Intersectionality
A multiplicity of social categories that interact and interlock to produce systematic and individual inequalities (Crenshaw, 1991; Collins, 1998; McCall, 2005)
Pushes against the ‘single axis’ analyses of race, class, gender, sexuality, age, nationality, religion etc
Highlights the ways these systems interact, create and reinforce one another, as well as how they are experienced simultaneously
Intersectional informed reflexivity centres fluidity and multiplicity and questions the negotiation of power relations

5. Methodology Target group: BME leaders
Survey questionnaire: 127 respondents
Support networks
Mentoring
Strategies for success
Interview: 26 respondents (15 people interviewed)
Data transcribed and analysed via NVIVO

6. Survey Findings A mixed picture for mentoring practices
Poor ratings for promoting professional development
Russell Group universities rated lower for communication and fostering independence
Challenges and Barriers to success
Lack of networking skills
Work harder than white counterparts
Lack of pro-activism

7. Interview findings Leadership; inclusive, collegiate and collaborative
Successful career trajectories: hard work, support and perseverance
Promotion; not necessarily related to leadership style but to performance and the process by which it was measured
Support; lack of formal mentoring
Identity; gender, ethnicity and to some degree class

8. Conclusions
BME leaders successful due to own hard work and perseverance, differences by gender and ethnicity
Ways forward
Formal mentoring systems
Representation on interview and promotion panels
Setting up BME networks
Access to training

9. Contact the authors Professor Kalwant Bhopal University of Birmingham
Dr Hazel Brown
University of Winchester