Nadine Inspires®—Strategic Leadership Advisor & Management Consulting Firm
📚 Books on Leadership, Wholeness, and Institutional Change
About the Author
Dr. Nadine Richards is a global leadership advisor, scholar, and former international school executive whose work bridges governance, culture, and the interior life of leadership—how leaders exercise judgment, steward power, and make decisions under pressure. With decades of experience guiding institutions through complexity across the United States and internationally, her writing integrates lived experience, research, and systems thinking.
Her books are not separate from her advisory work—they are foundational texts that inform how leaders build trust, steward power, and lead with both courage and care.
Published Work
Roses from Concrete®
A Black Feminist Leadership Model for School Reform
In a world demanding systemic change, Roses from Concrete offers a rigorous, research-based framework for educational transformation. Drawing on the lived experiences of Black women superintendents and Heads of School, the book introduces the Black Feminist Leadership Model® (BFLM®)—an equity-centered approach to leadership that dismantles structural barriers and redefines institutional power. This work is widely used in leadership preparation programs, graduate coursework, and executive learning environments.
“Dr. Nadine Richards has developed an essential, evidence-based framework for dismantling the structural inequities that have limited Black women’s access to the superintendency for far too long.”
— Dr. Rebecca Natow, Associate Professor, Hofstra University
Leadership Memoir (Forthcoming)
The Orchid and the Fire
Leadership memoir
The Orchid and the Fire explores what it means to lead without surrendering sensitivity. Through intimate stories of migration, motherhood, grief, and visibility, Dr. Richards examines the cost of endurance—and the quiet courage required to remain open in a world that rewards armor.
At once deeply personal and universally resonant, the book invites leaders, executives, and changemakers to reimagine power, wholeness, and what it means to bloom.