Dear Higher Education: Letters from the Social Justice Mountain

Our Collective Power: Creating Women of Color in Academia (WOCA) for Us, by Us

Whitney Pirtle

University of California Los Angles

May Sudhinaraset

University of California Los Angeles

Angie Otiniano Verissimo

University of California Los Angeles

Bo-Kyung Elizabeth Kim

University of California Los Angeles

Courtney Thomas Tobin

University of California Los Angeles

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Abstract

This letter is written by the founding members of Women of Color in Academia (WOCA), within a school of public health, who believe transformation is possible. We write this to you to offer strategies of how we use refusal to cultivate WOCA—a space for us, by us. Each of the authors share specific strategies we have implemented in our research, community connections, pedagogy, mentoring, and institution bridging to ensure the lonely only does not keep us entrapped.

Through five narratives, the letter highlights distinct yet interconnected approaches to reshaping academia. One advances abolitionist public health through deep study and political education, creating funded communal spaces where students engage abolition as public health practice. Another centers Asian immigrant women in community-based participatory research, challenging data invisibility while modeling mentorship grounded in whole-person care. The third reimagines pedagogy through culturally rooted community partnerships, promotor-led frameworks, and classroom practices that honor identity, joy, and belonging. The fourth demonstrates the power of bridging across disciplines, practice and research, and backgrounds to support system-impacted youth. The last highlights inter- and intra-institutional building through formalization as a form of refusal.

Together, these strategies actively resist the lonely only. As WOCA, we refuse isolation and tokenization. Instead, we cultivate collective empowerment, ethical scholarship, and institutional disruption. WOCA stands to represent our whole selves - not simply as a support network, but as an intentional space asserting that women of color belong in the academy, and that we have the power to transform it.

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Author Biographies

May Sudhinaraset, University of California Los Angeles

Professor. Department of Community Health Sciences.

Angie Otiniano Verissimo, University of California Los Angeles

Associate Professor of Teaching. Department of Community Health Sciences.

Bo-Kyung Elizabeth Kim, University of California Los Angeles

Associate Professor. Department of Community Health Sciences.

Courtney Thomas Tobin, University of California Los Angeles

Associate Professor. Department of Community Health Sciences.