Sarah Allen Gershon Named Leadership Fellow of the International Women’s Forum

ATLANTA –Sarah Allen Gershon has been selected for the 2023-2024 Leadership Fellow of the International Women’s Forum (IWF), comprising of 40 participants who represent the highest caliber of next-generation women leaders. IWF invests in making women stronger, smarter, and more influential through its Leadership Fellows Program, a year-long, intensive leadership development experience.

Gershon is the Director of WomenLead at Georgia State’s J. Mack Robinson College of Business. WomenLead is a university-wide academic program offering for-credit courses that advance leadership by women in the world and empower students to aspire to and achieve leadership roles. She is also the Ray and John Uttenhove WomenLead Professor, and Professor of Political Science in College of Arts & Science.

“It’s an honor to be named one of the IWF leadership fellows. I greatly admire the work of the IWF, and I am immensely grateful for this opportunity. I look forward to engaging with this incredible community and bringing what I learn back to support the professional development and success of our students in WomenLead said Gershon.

IWF’s Leadership Fellows Program was launched in 1994 with seed funding from the U.S. Labor Department as a direct result of the Glass Ceiling Commission. It annually convenes fellows from around the world for a total of 20 days of leadership development. Featuring academic partnerships with Harvard Business School and INSEAD, the program offers customized leadership training for high-achieving women leaders on their path to the C-suite. The approach is holistic and focused on the participant’s personal and professional development, career path, and leadership trajectory while embracing the value of an outside perspective.

This year’s class of the Leadership Fellows Program includes accomplished women leaders from 13 countries: Afghanistan, Australia, Bahamas, Brazil, Canada, Jamaica, Jordan, Mexico, Trinidad and Tobago, South Africa, Ukraine, the United States and Pakistan.

Gershon joined Georgia State University in 2008 where she is a faculty member in the Department of Political Science. She served as the diversity, equity, and inclusion faculty coordinator for the College of Arts & Sciences, the director of graduate studies for her home department of political science and the director of the Zoukis Research Collaborative.

Professor Gershon teaches courses on research methods, women in politics, and campaigns and elections. Her research focuses primarily on the experiences of women and racial and ethnic minorities in contemporary American politics. She has authored or co-authored more than 30 scholarly publications and book chapters in her career and received funding from several agencies, including the National Science Foundation. Professor Gershon has produced several books, including co-editing two editions of “Distinct Identities: Minority Women in U.S. Politics” and she is co-author of the ninth and tenth editions of the textbook “Approaching Democracy.” Gershon’s Bachelor of Arts is from Washington State University, and her master’s and doctoral degrees in Political Science are from Arizona State University.