Facebook pixel Student Spotlight: Sara Zare | Newsroom | Graduate School of Education and Psychology Newsroom Skip to main content
Pepperdine | Graduate School of Education and Psychology

Student Spotlight: Sara Zare


Sara Zare HeadshotWe are pleased to announce our EDOL student Sara Zare was awarded the SAGE most publishable leadership education paper award on Reimagining Culture with Care and Inclusion: Support Networks for Foreign-Born Leadership Educators. She was honored at this year’s ILA’s 23rd Global Conference.

Sara is a current GSEP student in the EdD Organizational Leadership program. In the past eight years, she has been helping organizations across various fields create high-performing, compassionate, and humanistic cultures. She works as an internal organizational development consultant at a government agency in San Diego. She graduated from the University of San Diego in Higher Education Leadership, emphasizing academic governance and faculty development. She is currently working on her dissertation, which focuses on the ways organizations can improve their effectiveness through creating a balance between performance and human fulfillment. 

Please see her most recent accomplishments with her partner Jeff Bourgeois, PhD, Assistant Professor, Global Leadership at Indiana Tech. 

Conference Presentations: 

Reimagining Culture with Care and Inclusion: Support Networks for Foreign-Born Leadership Educators.

Oct 2020 – Oct 2021

Co-presenter: Dr. Jeff Bourgeois, PhD, Assistant Professor Global leadership Indiana Tech

International Leadership Association 

Project description

Foreign-born Leadership Educators add a global perspective to the curriculum and bring valued elements of internationalization to the departments and institutions to which they belong. Because leadership is an academic discipline influenced by culture, those who claim a cultural identity different from the one they teach may flourish with systems of support unique to their role. This qualitative study explores the formal support structures for foreign-born leadership educators and exposes a need for increased deployment of support initiatives at the departmental and institutional level.

Publications: 

Going Somewhere Else: A Qualitative Exploration of the Experience of Foreign-Born Leadership Educators

Jul 31, 2021  

Journal of Leadership, Accountability and Ethics

Co-author: Jeff Bourgeois, PhD, Assistant Professor Global leadership Indiana Tech

Leadership is a discipline influenced by culture. It stands to reason that cultural identities of students and educators of leadership steers their leadership identities. This project investigates the implications of culture on Leadership Educator identity in foreign-born teachers—persons whose national cultural identity is different than the one in which they teach. Using semi-structured interviews of participants from around the world, this qualitative study identifies shared experiences, challenges, and discoveries of foreign-born Leadership Educators. Findings will provide insight for institutions supporting foreign-born leadership faculty, and also inform the development of Leadership Education.