How Black Professionals Move From Token Roles Into Decision-making
Dr. Omosefe Christina is a Medical Doctor, Entrepreneur, and Founder of Elite Exams. She blends frontline clinical practice with medical education and community programmes to help International Medical Graduates (IMG) and African families flourish in their careers and communities in the UK.
There is a moment many Black professionals recognise, the one where an invitation arrives, and it feels, genuinely, like progress. A seat on a diversity committee. A keynote at a conference. A request to join the equity task force. The phone calls come more frequently, and the visibility is real.
But somewhere along the way, a quieter realisation sets in: the invitation was to be present, not to decide. To contribute, not to lead. To represent, not to govern. It is a distinction that rarely gets named out loud. That silence is part of the problem.
More than a pipeline problem
The numbers have been documented extensively, but they are worth sitting with. A McKinsey & Company report on Black professionals in the United States (US) private sector found that, at current rates, it would take approximately 95 years for Black employees to reach proportional representation across management levels. With deliberate, best-in-class interventions, that timeline drops to around 25 years. Still a generation.
At the top of organisations, the gap is even more pronounced. A 2025 study in the Journal of Accounting Research found that while Black professionals make up 9.4% of the overall workforce, they hold just 3.1% of board seats and 1.9% of top executive positions. The researchers describe this as "diversity tokenism," a pattern where organisations increase high-visibility appointments without making structural changes at every level of the pipeline. In other words, the face changes. The power structure often does not.
It is not the ceiling, it is the rung
The "glass ceiling" has long been the dominant metaphor for this conversation. But the evidence suggests the more urgent problem sits much earlier in the journey.
McKinsey's research identifies what it calls the "broken rung". The point at which Black professionals, well represented in entry-level roles, fall significantly out of the pipeline at the first step into management. In the companies studied, Black employees made up 14% of the overall workforce, but just 7% of managers. The ceiling is almost irrelevant if the ladder is broken halfway up.
For internationally trained professionals, including overseas-trained clinicians who often enter new systems mid-career and carry both expertise and the added weight of cultural navigation, this dynamic tends to be even sharper. Many arrive with strong credentials and years of experience, only to find themselves channelled into roles that value their presence more than their authority.
Sociologist Rosabeth Moss Kanter identified three experiences that tend to follow professionals in token positions: heightened performance pressure, boundary heightening, and role entrapment, where individuals are repeatedly called upon to perform identity rather than capability. In practical terms, this often looks like being invited to every diversity panel and none of the strategy meetings.
The sponsorship gap nobody talks about enough
Mentorship has had a lot of good press. Sponsorship gets less press, and that disparity matters. A mentor offers guidance. A sponsor uses their own credibility and influence to put someone's name in the room before they arrive. It is the difference between being told how to navigate a system and having someone hold the door open.
Research by Catalyst, surveying Black professionals across the UK, Canada, and the United States, found that the absence of sponsorship is one of the most consistently cited barriers to career advancement. It does not exist in isolation. McKinsey's data shows that Black employees are 23% less likely to report receiving meaningful support to advance and 41% less likely to view promotion processes as fair.
What makes this particularly worth examining is what it is not. It is not a gap in ambition, or effort, or qualification. Research by Korn Ferry on senior Black leaders found that nearly 60% had taken highly deliberate, strategic approaches to their career progression, proactively building skills, networks, and visibility. They were doing everything right. The system was simply not designed to reward it equally.
What the move from visibility to governance actually looks like
The shift is not inevitable. But it is possible, and the research offers a reasonably clear picture of what it tends to require.
For African diaspora professionals and internationally qualified clinicians building their authority in new environments, studies on Black leadership development point consistently to a few distinguishing factors. Deliberate network-building that extends well beyond an immediate peer group, a professional identity shaped around organisational priorities rather than diversity representation alone, and a purposeful pursuit of sponsors, not just mentors, who will advocate openly.
For organisations, the responsibility sits at the structural level. The Journal of Accounting Research study poses a question worth taking seriously–are institutions genuinely expanding access to decision-making, or simply redistributing visibility within the same old structure? Meaningful progress means tracking not just who is hired, but who is promoted, who gets the high-stakes projects, who is invited into the spaces where institutional influence is actually concentrated. It means creating pathways, not gestures.
Why it matters beyond the individual
There is, of course, a strong equity case for getting this right. But there is also a plain organisational one. Research consistently links diverse leadership to stronger decision-making, better responsiveness to complex challenges, and improved organisational performance. In healthcare, where the representation of internationally trained professionals and African diaspora clinicians in governance roles shapes how services are designed and who they actually serve, the stakes extend well beyond the boardroom.
When people with lived migration experience, globally trained professionals, and Black leaders are confined to roles that are visible but light on authority, institutions miss more than an equity opportunity. They lose the full depth of what those professionals bring.
The real question
The evidence is clear. The barriers are structural, well-documented, and, this matters, addressable. The professionals navigating these systems are not waiting to be deemed ready. Many are already doing the work, building the networks, and proving the value, often at a disproportionate personal cost.
The more pressing question is whether the institutions they work within are prepared to move beyond performative inclusion, to offer not just a seat at the table, but a genuine voice in what happens there.
Representation and governance are not the same thing. The sooner organisations stop treating them as interchangeable, the sooner both can mean something.
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Dr. Omosefe Christina, Medical Doctor, CEO & Founder
Dr. Omosefe Christina creates digital learning platforms that turn frontline experience into practical support for international doctors in the UK. She is the CEO of Elite Exams, which supports the medical education of internationally trained doctors aspiring to become independent GPs. She builds digital systems, courses, platforms, and automated learning pathways to support doctors who migrate to the UK.
References:
JINGDANTAN. (2025). Diversity Tokenism. Journal of Accounting Research.
McKinsey & Company. (2021). Race in the workplace: The Black experience in the US private sector.
Catalyst. (2025). Performance feedback and support crucial for retaining Black employees.
Korn Ferry. (2021). Leadership lessons from senior Black leaders.
Pepperdine University Digital Commons. A phenomenological study on tokenism and leadership style.
