Dan and Charlene sit down with University of Louisville President Dr. Neeli Bendapudi. She’s the first woman and the first person of color to lead the university. They talk about why Asian Americans tend to be overrepresented in middle management and underrepresented in leadership positions.

Dr. Bendapudi was brought on at UofL following some serious scandals. In the corporate and institutional worlds, we often see women and BIPOC replacing white male leaders in times of controversy.

“It’s called the glass cliff,” Bendapudi says. “Their likelihood of success is less because they’re not walking into something that’s smooth sailing.”

How can people in that position succeed when it almost seems like they’re set up to fail? “My mission now is to make sure there are many women and people of color who are in positions of power,” she says, “so that if one person fails, you could absolutely say that person is a bad leader, but you wouldn’t be able to say, ‘well, we tried a woman president—that didn’t work.’”

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