Dr. Avreeayl Womack-O'Neil's work sits at the intersection of school leadership practice and educational research: how leaders in culturally plural international schools build the trust that makes institutions function.
The question behind the research
International schools across East and Southeast Asia serve globally mobile, multilingual student bodies. They are marked by cultural pluralism, layered leadership hierarchies, high staff turnover and complex accountability systems. Despite their global orientation, their leadership structures often reproduce Eurocentric norms in which Black male leaders remain underrepresented.
Dr. Womack-O'Neil's doctoral research at the University of Missouri asks a question that this setting makes urgent:
How do coalition-building strategies utilized by Black male leaders in international schools in East and Southeast Asia advance organizational effectiveness?
Method
The study is a qualitative narrative inquiry grounded in contextual leadership theory. It draws on semi-structured interviews with Black male school leaders working across the region, analysed thematically to preserve participant voice and the meaning they gave to their own leadership journeys.
What the research found
Across the narratives, one pattern held: coalition-building advanced organizational effectiveness not through formal authority but through relationships. It strengthened organizational trust, sustained collaborative leadership structures, improved communication and supported a positive school culture.
Coalition-building also functioned as a mechanism for establishing leadership credibility in environments where these leaders' perspectives had historically been underrepresented — and for sustaining change beyond any single administrator's tenure.
Trust as the foundation
Participants described coalition-building as assembling a reliable, dependable team built on organizational trust rather than a political faction. Trust, in this account, is not a sentiment but an investment that compounds over time.
Transparent communication
Clarity, visibility and explaining the reasoning behind decisions preserved institutional stability. Communication emerged less as an administrative task than as the engine of trust.
Mentorship and succession
Mentoring strengthened organizational alignment and prepared future leaders capable of sustaining systems beyond one tenure — leadership measured by what survives the leader's departure.
Cultural responsiveness
Leading well in these schools required building trust across linguistic, ethnic and national lines, and cultivating inclusive communities rather than simply administering them.
Shared leadership
Organizational effectiveness improved when responsibility and ownership were distributed across the school community rather than concentrated in formal positions.
Why it matters for schools
The findings offer contextually grounded guidance for anyone leading a multicultural school. They suggest that leadership development in international education should prioritise relational capacity — trust, communication, mentorship and cultural responsiveness — alongside operational competence, and that diverse leadership perspectives strengthen institutions rather than merely diversifying them.
Professional commitment
Alongside the research, Dr. Womack-O'Neil has spent more than fifteen years in schools in the United States, China and Singapore, in roles from classroom teacher and department head to dean of students, deputy principal and principal. The research grows directly out of that practice: it is the work of a practitioner examining, with academic rigour, the conditions that let a school community function well.