A personal essay on belonging, doubt, and what it really means to claim your seat.
I still remember the silence.
Not the comfortable silence of a room gathering its thoughts. The other kind. The kind that has a shape and a weight, and presses against you in specific ways depending on where you are sitting and who you are.
I was the only Black woman at the table.
I had been in that position before — in boardrooms, in meetings, on committees. I had learned to read those silences the way you learn to read weather. This one said: You are here. We are not sure why.
No one said this. No one had to. That is the thing about certain kinds of exclusion. The most efficient version of it requires no words at all.
What I Carried Into That Room
I did not arrive at that table by accident. I had worked full-time for years while raising my children and pursuing my MBA. I had navigated institutions not designed for me, built relationships in spaces that were not always welcoming, and shown up consistently enough to earn a seat that should never have required that much earning.
But qualifications do not dissolve doubt. They just make it more confusing.
Because you can know, intellectually, that you belong somewhere. You can have the credentials, the experience, the track record. And still feel, in the silence of certain rooms, that your presence is provisional.
You can be the most qualified person in the room and still feel like you’re one sentence away from being asked to leave.
That is not imposter syndrome, though we are quick to give women that diagnosis. It is pattern recognition. It is the accumulated intelligence of a body that has been in this situation before and knows, viscerally, what is at stake.
The Words That Recalibrated Everything
My mentor — a woman who had navigated her own decades of rooms like mine — looked at me directly and said:
‘You don’t just deserve a seat at this table. You belong at every table where decisions are made.’
I want to be honest about what that felt like. It did not feel immediately liberating. It felt, first, like grief. Because I realized how long I had been operating under a different belief — that belonging was something to be earned, endlessly, one room at a time.
But she was not telling me to be less cautious. She was telling me something more fundamental: that my presence was not a gift the room was giving me. It was something I brought with me.
What Claiming Your Seat Actually Looks Like
It does not always look like a grand declaration. Sometimes it looks like saying the thing in the meeting that everyone is thinking but no one will say. Sometimes it looks like not apologizing before you give your opinion. Sometimes it looks like staying in the room when every instinct tells you to shrink.
Sometimes it looks like founding an organization because the county you live in has never formally recognized its Black community — and you decide that changes now.
Sometimes it looks like writing a book.
The Distinctive Leader is, in many ways, the book I wrote out of that boardroom silence. Not in bitterness, but in recognition that this experience is not unique to me. There are thousands of people sitting in rooms right now, carrying their own version of that weight.
Claiming your seat is both a deeply personal act and a profoundly political one.
To You, Reading This
If you have ever felt that silence — in a boardroom, a classroom, a community meeting — I want you to know something.
The doubt is not evidence that you don’t belong. It is evidence that you are paying attention in a world that has not always been fair. That is intelligence, not weakness.
And belonging is not something the room grants you. It is something you decide.
Claim your seat. Not because you have finally proven yourself enough. But because you were always enough.
Frequently Asked Questions
Q: What does ‘claiming your seat at the table’ mean?
A: It means asserting your right to be present, heard, and counted in decision-making spaces — regardless of whether the culture of that space has explicitly welcomed you. It is both a mindset and a practice.
Q: How do Black women navigate imposter syndrome in leadership?
A: Many researchers distinguish between imposter syndrome — an internal experience of self-doubt — and the real, external barriers that Black women face in professional spaces. Both require different responses: the first calls for self-trust; the second calls for systemic change. Strong mentorship, community, and visible representation all matter.
Pick up The Distinctive Leader at BookLore Orangeville or on Amazon.ca — and start owning every room you walk into.
