Jeannine Gant of The Detroit Regional Partnership On How We Can Increase Women’s Engagement in Leadership and Management

Originally published by Authority Magazine

 

Thank you so much for doing this with us! Before we dig in, our readers would like to get to know you a bit more. Can you tell us a bit about your “backstory”? What led you to this particular career path?

My story really begins with my parents. My mother and father were both chemists, among the first Black families in a small Mid-Michigan town, pioneers in their own right. My father was the first Black chemist at Dow Corning. My mother joined him later, quietly navigating white male dominated laboratory spaces with excellence and grace. I didn’t fully understand what she had accomplished until recently, talking with her at 84-years-old. She was a hidden figure. And I was watching her the whole time without knowing what I was seeing.

What they gave me wasn’t a roadmap. My father never solved problems for you. He laid out your options and trusted you to think it through. My mother showed you what it looked like to belong in a room that wasn’t built for you. They didn’t just teach me how to lead. They taught me how to think. Those two things have shaped everything about how I lead.

I’ve spent my career leading through transformation. Nearly a decade as CEO of Big Brothers Big Sisters of Metro Detroit, navigating a pension crisis, a global health crisis, and the civil unrest that followed George Floyd’s murder. I’ve worked with Fortune 100 companies on purpose-driven leadership. I’ve consulted with nonprofit CEOs who needed a thought partner, someone to walk alongside them in the lonely work of leading. And now I’m helping Detroit transition an entire legacy industry into something new.

I didn’t plan this path. But looking back, every chapter required the same thing: showing up fully as myself, even when the room wasn’t expecting me.

Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you began your career?

When I joined the Global Epicenter of Mobility (GEM) I was 1.5 years behind on a grant. They handed me a white binder with a description of the grant and a list of outcomes. No framework. No strategy. A coalition of 24 organizations that had no formal accountability to my role. I needed to build everything from scratch: strategy, structure, and influence. So, I requested an executive coach to help me find my footing.

Her name is Kimberly Houston. As we started working together, I learned something that stopped me in my tracks. My father had been her mentor.

My father had passed away a couple of years earlier. And there we would be in our coaching sessions, and she would say “you know your father would say…” and then tell me a story about him. His strategy, his way of thinking, his approach to problems. It came back to me through her, exactly when I needed it most, decades after he had invested in her without knowing what that investment would one day return.

I don’t think that’s a coincidence. I think that’s what legacy actually looks like.

Can you share a pivotal moment in your career that significantly influenced your path to leadership?

People often talk about pivotal career moments as if they’re dramatic turning points: a big opportunity, a defining challenge, a mentor who changed everything. Mine was quieter than that.

When I was brought in to expand the footprint of a national organization in Detroit, something just clicked. Not about leadership. Not about title or position. About purpose. This was the work I was supposed to be doing. Work that was rooted in impact, in building something meaningful, in serving communities that needed it. That office that I started with an Ikea wrench eventually grew into Playworks Michigan under my leadership.

From that clarity, leadership emerged naturally. I didn’t pursue it. I didn’t strategize my way into a leadership position. I followed the work that felt true and leadership came with it.

That realization has guided every decision since. When I took the helm at Big Brothers Big Sisters and spent nearly a decade leading a hundred-year-old organization through the slow and necessary work of change. When I created a national movement to ensure families had their basic needs met during the pandemic, because when everything shut down, I knew our kids and their families would suffer disproportionately. When I stepped down and trusted that the next chapter would find me. When I said yes to helping Detroit transform an entire industry. None of those moves were about career advancement. They were about impact.

I didn’t find my path to leadership. I found my purpose and leadership followed.

None of us are able to achieve success without some help along the way. Is there a particular person who you are grateful towards who helped get you to where you are? Can you share a story about that?

There are people you’re grateful to, and then there are people who are so woven into who you are that gratitude feels like an understatement. For me that’s my parents, but also someone I didn’t expect.

Early in my time leading Big Brothers Big Sisters, I had a mentor who eventually became my board chair. His name is Terry McElroy. He was the CFO of a national insurance company. And what he gave me was something I didn’t even fully understand I was receiving at the time.

He was a thought partner in the truest sense. A sounding board I could call anytime. He taught me how to do deep dives into financial statements, not just to understand the numbers but to find the stories, the gaps, the strategies hiding inside them. That skill served me in every boardroom, every finance committee, and every high-stakes conversation I’ve had since.

But it was more than technical knowledge. He helped me learn how to navigate male-dominated spaces, though I don’t think he ever framed it that way. He wasn’t thinking about my lens as a Black woman. He was thinking about my lens as a leader. And in doing that, treating my leadership as the only thing that mattered, he gave me something I will carry forever.

When my father passed away, Terry drove two hours during the height of a global health crisis to come to the funeral.

That’s not a mentor. That’s someone who genuinely showed up for you as a human being. And I have never forgotten it.

Is there a particular book that made a significant impact on you? Can you share a story or explain why it resonated with you so much?

There were two books that came to me at a moment when I was really struggling as a leader. We Are the Leaders We’ve Been Waiting For by Eddie Glaude Jr. And on the bookshelf in my father’s old office, which is now my home office, a first edition of My Bondage and My Freedom by Frederick Douglass.

Neither book gave me a roadmap. Together they gave me something harder to find: steadiness. They stirred up a resilience in me that I didn’t know I needed. A reminder that the leaders this moment requires, already exist. That purpose is its own north star.

In the work I do around regional economic development we talk about an opportunity pathway, the idea that on the path to any goal you will encounter speed bumps, detours, and barriers. The question isn’t whether they’ll appear. The question is whether you can see them clearly and keep moving anyway.

Those books helped me do that. They helped me keep my eyes on the purpose of the work even when the work itself felt impossible. And I kept going.

Sometimes the most important thing a leader can do is refuse to be erased.

Do you have a favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Do you have a story about how that was relevant in your life or your work?

“Pick your battles.”

My mother said it first. It sounds simple, practical even. But the older I get and the more I lead the more I understand how profound it actually is.

As a leader, I carried it with me everywhere. When someone came to me frustrated, hurt, feeling wronged, and they were right to feel that way, I would ask them a question. Is this really the battle you want to fight right now? Because there will be more battles ahead. Leadership is a long game. Where do you want to spend your energy?

I never told them what to do. I just helped them lay out their options. The same way my dad did for me.

What I didn’t fully understand until recently is that my mother wasn’t just dispensing wisdom. She was living it. Every day she showed up in spaces that weren’t designed for her — she was practicing exactly what she preached. That phrase wasn’t advice she read somewhere. It was a survival strategy she earned.

And then there’s this. Years after I passed those words on to a member of my staff, she came back to me and said she would never forget when I told her to pick her battles. It grounded her when she really needed it.

Three generations. One quiet truth. My mother gave it to me. I gave it to her. And it kept moving.

How have you used your success to make the world a better place?

I’ve come to believe that success and service are not separate things. If I’m not making the world better, then I’m not actually succeeding. That’s not a philosophy I arrived at. It’s just always been true for me.

My career has taken me to unexpected places. I’ve worked alongside the executive leadership of a major tech company on an immersive leadership experience in Copenhagen, helping them embed sustainability not as a checkbox but as a core organizational value. I’ve helped revamp juvenile justice systems to make them more just. I’ve worked with a performance arts organization in Zimbabwe helping them use their program to create workforce opportunities. I’ve spent years ensuring that the most marginalized communities have a seat at the table in Detroit’s new economy.

But the moment that stays with me most happened at a National Council of Foundations conference. A young man approached me after I spoke. He told me he had been a foster child in a program I was once part of. He was now a PhD candidate in Ohio.

I don’t know that I did anything extraordinary for that young man. But somewhere along the way the work touched his life. And he came back to tell me.

That’s why I do this.

And then there’s the smaller work that doesn’t make it onto any resume. Being the person someone calls when they have eight minutes before they completely lose it. Talking to a colleague off the cliff after a hard meeting. Showing up as an ally, not just in policy or programs but in the daily human moments where people need someone in their corner.

The world gets better one person at a time. I try to show up for as many of those moments as I can.

Ok, thank you for that. Let’s now jump to the primary focus of our interview. According to this report, only about 31.7% of top executive positions across industries are held by women. This reflects great historical progress, but it also shows that more work still has to be done to empower women. In your opinion and experience what is currently holding back women from leadership and management?

There are people with average to below average qualifications moving into leadership positions not because they’re the most prepared but because they have audacity. They don’t second-guess themselves. They don’t wait until they feel ready. They just move.

Meanwhile I have watched brilliant, qualified, capable women standing in the hallway talking themselves out of the room.

This isn’t a pipeline problem. It’s what happens when a system spends decades telling women to be smaller, quieter, more careful and they internalize it. The audacity gap is real. Closing it starts with self-trust.

Psychological safety also plays a significant role and it doesn’t get discussed honestly enough. Psychological safety is not about being comfortable. It’s about whether you can speak up, take risks, disagree, and bring your full thinking into a room without fear of humiliation, dismissal, or retaliation. When that safety is absent a woman self-censors. She shrinks. She stops contributing her best ideas because the cost feels too high. Bias creates those conditions and bias does not disappear on its own.

I have watched a woman in a leadership role slowly buckle under a psychologically unsafe environment. Losing her voice. Stopping trusting herself. It was painful to witness. What I learned from that is this: you can advise, you can support, you can walk alongside someone in that situation. But in the end it comes down to agency. She has to decide she is done shrinking. She has to decide to find her voice again. Nobody can make that decision for her.

Over the years, structures were built to help create the conditions where that decision becomes possible. Diversity and equity initiatives, bias training, reporting mechanisms, and offices dedicated to creating more equitable environments. Those structures were imperfect, but they were doing important work. As they get dismantled women are left to navigate these spaces with fewer protections and less recourse than before.

Trust yourself. Arm yourself with your own knowing. Claim your agency. And go in with your eyes open, because right now we are asking women to carry a heavier load. That is not a personal failing. That is a system in retreat.