FAMU professor highlighted as “Woman of Power” by Black Enterprise

FAMU Professor Atira Charles is being highlighted by Black Enterprise magazine as a “Woman of Power.”

The national business publication recently included Charles, an assistant professor of management in the School of Business and Industry (SBI), in the February “Women of Power” edition. She is featured in an article about workplace empowerment.

In conjunction with the magazine article, Charles was invited to present a workshop titled, “Balancing Act: Strategies for Managing Racial & Gender Identities at Work” at the 2014 Black Enterprise Women of Power Summit. The Summit was held Feb. 26 - March 1 in Boca Raton, Fla. More than 800 women from diverse industries and professional organizations attended the summit.

Charles was among Hollywood and Corporate America elite at the Women of Power Summit, as some of her fellow presenters and honorees included: Emmy and Tony Award winner Cicely Tyson; world-class tennis player and entrepreneur Venus Williams; civil rights activist Myrlie Evers; founder and President of the Children's Defense Fund Marian Wright Edelman and Apple’s environmental chief Lisa Jackson.

“There are a number of factors that can impact a woman's career trajectory,” said Sonia Alleyne, an editorial director at Black Enterprise. “Through her work, Dr. Atira Charles has not only studied and identified them, she offers insight and strategies for helping women mitigate challenges that could easily derail their efforts. Our theme this year was, ‘Embrace Your Power,’ and we were eager to learn from Dr. Charles the strategies to accomplish just that.”

Charles received both her bachelor’s and master’s degrees from FAMU’s SBI program in 2003 and received her Ph.D. in organizational management from Arizona State University in 2008.

Charles dedicates much of her research to issues of race and gender in the workplace, bias and stereotypes in the workplace, mentoring in diverse organizations, performance appraisal systems and managing emotions.

Her research project, “The Intersection of Race and Politics: A Framework of Racialized Organizational Politics Perceptions,” was recently published in Politics in Organizations: Theory and Research.

In 2012, Charles was named among FAMU’s “125 Outstanding Alumni” during the Presidential Gala. She is a member of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Inc., the Academy of Management, the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology and the Management Faculty of Color Association.