“A black woman with a PhD is worse than a woman with HIV.” I didn’t respond. Instead, I looked over at his wife. I wondered about how she felt hearing him say that. She put her head down. I wondered what it meant for her to be married to a man who held that belief. How far could she rise and grow with a partner who felt that way? And then I wondered what it meant for me, a black woman who was, at the time, earning a PhD.

Through conducting dozens of interviews (formal and casual) with high-powered women, reading countless articles and books and reflecting on my own experiences, I learned a lot. And those lessons can be summed up as what I call the “dirty-girl effect.”