About

Erica Gabrielle Foldy is an Associate Professor of Public and Nonprofit Management at the Wagner Graduate School of Public Service at New York University, where she also directs the Advocacy and Political Action Specialization and co-directs the Capstone Program. Her research and teaching focus on understanding what enables and inhibits collaboration and learning across potential divisions, with a recent emphasis on race and racism in organizations. She explores how identities such as race, frames like color blindness or color cognizance, and learning behaviors such as reflection influence the ability to connect with others, embedding these influences within broader organizational and social contexts by examining power and leadership. Professor Foldy has conducted research across a diverse range of organizations, including large public agencies, community nonprofits, Fortune 500 companies, boutique firms, and healthcare settings. She is a co-author of the book 'The Color Bind: Talking (and not Talking) about Race at Work' and a co-editor of the 'Reader in Gender and Organizations.' Her expertise has been featured in prominent outlets such as the Washington Post, Boston Globe, Vox, Reuters, Bloomberg.com, CNN.com, NBC.com, and Huffpost. Prior to her academic career, she spent 15 years as an organizer on issues related to foreign policy, women’s rights, and labor. She currently co-leads the NYU Democracy Project, which funds students to work in pro-democracy organizations, and has provided consulting on strategic planning, organization development, and diversity and inclusion. She holds a BA from Harvard College, a PhD from Boston College, and has been a Post-Doctoral Fellow at Harvard Business School and a Visiting Scholar at the Russell Sage Foundation. Recognized for her teaching, she has received the Professor of the Year award three times and the NYU Distinguished Teaching Award in 2023, as well as the Martin Luther King, Jr. award in 2021.

Research topics

• Political Science
• Sociology
• Computer Science
• Public relations
• Mathematics
• Geology
• Psychology
• Epistemology
• Cartography
• Geography

Selected publications

• Optimizing Diversity to Improve Perioperative Team Performance

  Anesthesiology Clinics · 2025-01-30 · 1 citations

  reviewSenior author
  PublisherDOI

• Colorblindness and race dismissiveness: Discursive racism and the limits of multicultural competence

  Journal of Social Issues · 2024-05-19 · 1 citations

  articleSenior author

  Abstract This qualitative study integrates critical race theory to examine the practice of multicultural competence and the mechanism of discursive racism in the context of child welfare workers. We troubled the dominant paradigm of multicultural competence taken up by practitioners, and deployed discourse analysis on racial dialogue in a real‐life setting to highlight how the multicultural competence approach risks becoming a form of colorblind racism that diminish the importance of structure racial power which we call race dismissiveness. In our findings we identified four distinct patterns of race dismissiveness that the practitioners adopted to deflect racial dialogue: race identity fetishism, racial peripheralization, racial erasure, and racial externalization. We argue that the separation between semantic expressions of multicultural beliefs and enacted racial practices needs to be conceptualized as a part of the discursive enactment of colorblind racism that functions to keep structural racism intact through everyday practice.

  PublisherDOI

• ‘Contestation, negotiation, and resolution’: The relationship between power and collective leadership

  International Journal of Management Reviews · 2022-12-08 · 12 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding

  Abstract The relationship between power and collective leadership (CL) has been theoretically understood and empirically addressed in many different ways. To make sense of this diversity, we investigate and diagram the role of power in CL. First, we identify six representations of power—six ways in which scholars have found that power shapes the emergence and enactment of CL. These representations include: Even in CL, individual power matters; Leaders can devolve power to their subordinates by empowering them; Contextual characteristics related to power can influence the possibility and enactment of CL; CL can create the collective power necessary for people in marginalized positions to challenge embedded power dynamics; Power is intrinsic to the co‐construction process; Attributions affect who can enact CL, how they are viewed, and whether they have power. Second, we offer a conceptual framework that provides a comprehensive way to understand the relationship between power and CL. The framework includes two dimensions, one related to power (that runs from episodic to systemic) and the other related to CL (that runs from entitative to emergent). Third, we create a conceptual map by placing the six representations within this framework. Based on our research, we make the case that we cannot understand CL without understanding the ubiquitous, complex, and even contradictory role of power. We also suggest avenues for expanding and elaborating discussions of power in the CL literature.

  PublisherDOI

• Collective Dimensions of Leadership

  2022-01-01

  book-chapterSenior author
  PublisherDOI

• Challenging gender stereotypes and advancing inclusive leadership in the operating theatre

  British Journal of Anaesthesia · 2020 · 76 citations

  • Political Science
  • Public relations
  • Psychology
  PublisherDOI

• Collective dimensions of leadership: Connecting theory and method

  Human Relations · 2020 · 209 citations

  • Sociology
  • Political Science
  • Sociology

  In this introductory article we explain the impetus for creating the Special Issue, along with its goals and the process by which we created it. We present a map of the terrain of collective leadership (CL) that builds on earlier frameworks, recognizing that the terrain is expanding and has become increasingly difficult to traverse. The map is comprised of two axes or dimensions. The first axis, the ‘locus of leadership,’ captures how scholars conceptualize where to look for manifestations of leadership. That is, does the leadership reside in the group or does it reside in the system? The second axis is the view of ‘collectivity’ that plots how scholars conceptualize the collective. Do they see it as an empirical type of leadership or a theoretical lens through which to study leadership? We then plot distinctive CL research into four cells, providing definitions and references to empirical work emblematic for each cell. In introducing and summarizing each of the five articles we have selected for this Special Issue, we show where each of these is located on the CL research map, and distil how each provides a clear connection between theory and method in a way that advances our understanding of CL.

  PublisherDOI

• Effects of Gender and Race/Ethnicity on Perioperative Team Performance

  Anesthesiology Clinics · 2020-04-23 · 2 citations

  articleSenior author
  PublisherDOI

• Studying collective leadership: The road ahead

  Human Relations · 2020-02-25 · 99 citations

  article

  In the concluding article, we move from providing a map of the collective leadership (CL) research field that has been conducted to date to providing a travel guide that we hope can inspire both experienced and novice travelers to push out the frontiers of exploration of CL. A Rapid Appraisal analysis of the extant CL research revealed that most of the work to date has focused on shared and distributed leadership; taken an empirical rather than a conceptual focus; and strongly emphasized qualitative versus quantitative research methods. Looking ahead to future CL research, we identify the following three challenges as being the most significant for leadership researchers to confront: the fundamental ambiguity of the space in which CL resides; the definitional problems inherited from leadership studies and exacerbated by its ambiguous nature; and the need to more fully embrace issues of process in CL. In response to these challenges, the following three guidelines are provided: the need to decipher CL configurations and its power-based foundations; the need to establish how leadership is made relevant in a collective setting; and the need for CL researchers to adopt strong process models.

  PublisherDOI

• Perseverance Despite the Perception of Threat and Marginalization: Students’ High Grit in Grad School and Implications for Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion in Higher Education

  Journal for the Study of Postsecondary and Tertiary Education · 2020-01-01 · 5 citations

  articleOpen access

  Aim/Purpose: This paper illustrates the relationship between graduate students’ social identities and their ability to persevere in an academically rigorous graduate setting. Through our analysis we show that while many students experience marginalization and threats to their identity, they display no less grit than those who do not experience marginalization and threats to their identity. Background: There are contentious debates in higher education about the role that universities should play in promoting equity, diversity, and inclusion principles. Existing arguments rarely consider students’ social identity in conjunction with their academic mindsets and ability to succeed in the graduate school environment, but instead make assumptions of who students are and of what they are capable. Methodology: Survey methods and quantitative analyses, including regression and ANOVA testing. Contribution: While demonstrating that students who experience marginalization and social identity threat display no less grit than their counterparts, we claim that all students would still desire to live and work in a society in which their social identities are respected and honored. Findings: Many students, even those successfully navigating graduate school, still identify as oppressed or marginalized, which is strongly related to certain social identities and to social identity threat. No demographic or oppression-based variable alone correlates negatively or positively with perseverance as tested by the grit scale we used. Recommendations for Practitioners: We recommend that universities uphold a commitment to diversity and inclusion in order to create welcoming environments for all students to thrive. Recommendation for Researchers: We recommend that researchers focus on the intersections of identity, perseverance, and policy to fully address the issues of marginalization and social identity threat at graduate school campuses. Impact on Society: Our paper works to counter the often-negative perception of students who identify as marginalized and who demand more inclusive university environments. Future Research: In future studies, it would be beneficial for the field to address other social identities and examine their perceptions of marginalization and inclusion and assess impacts on academic mindset.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Employee Resource Groups: What We Know about Their Impact on Individuals and Organizations

  Academy of Management Proceedings · 2019-08-01 · 7 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding

  In this paper, I catalog what we know and don’t know about the impact of employee resource groups (ERGs), also known as affinity groups or employee networks. ERGs are intra-organizational, formally sanctioned, and based on shared social identities like gender or race. They are quite prevalent in practice but their impact has received mixed judgments from researchers. First, scholars have explored different kinds of impacts, from their influence on individual outcomes and organizational performance to their effect on collective action for organizational change. Second, scholars have come to different conclusions about whether ERGs have, in fact, had these impacts or not. This divergence is, in part, due to the fact that scholarship is found in four relatively isolated streams: mainstream research on equity, diversity and inclusion; social movements in organizations; industrial relations; and critical research on diversity management. In this paper, I provide a systematic review of the literature on ERGs, attempting to distinguish between claims made about the groups and the evidence used to support those claims, in order to identify what we truly know about their impact. I end with suggestions for future scholarship.

  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Sonia Ospina

  Wagner College

  34 shared

• Tamara R. Buckley

  Hunter College

  16 shared

• Jenny W. Rudolph

  9 shared

• Steven S. Taylor

  Worcester Polytechnic Institute

  9 shared

• Rebecca D. Minehart

  6 shared

• Laurie Goldman

  Tufts University

  6 shared

• Robert Simon

  Georgia Institute of Technology

  5 shared

• Sandy Kendall

  5 shared

Awards & honors

• Professor of the Year award (3 times)
• NYU's Distinguished Teaching Award (2023)
• Martin Luther King, Jr. award from NYU (2021)