About Frayed
Frayed: Leadership Burnout Among Women in Higher Ed (Johns Hopkins 2026) tells the real stories of women leaders across higher education who are navigating roles that have become structurally impossible — roles marked by overwhelming workload, limited control, depleted community, inconsistent rewards, and deep fairness and values misalignments. Through interviews with women faculty leaders across levels, Frayed reveals how burnout is not an individual failure but a predictable outcome of cultural, structural, and gendered conditions in higher education.
This book is for anyone who has ever felt stretched thin, unseen, or overwhelmed in leadership, and for institutions ready to imagine healthier, more humane ways of leading.
Real stories. Real leaders. Real burnout.
I wrote Frayed because everywhere I turned, women leaders were telling me the same thing:
“Everyone I know is burned out.”
But they weren’t talking about it publicly.
They weren’t talking about it with their teams.
Most of them weren’t even talking about it with each other.
I wanted to create a space where women’s leadership stories could be heard, honored, and understood as reflections of a system that asks too much and gives too little. Frayed is my attempt to name what’s happening, validate what leaders are feeling, and open the door to conversations about repair and possibility.
What People Are Saying About Frayed
Compassionate
Pope-Ruark turns the compassionate perspective she previously brought to understanding faculty burnout to thinking about the ‘impossible jobs’ done by so many women leaders on college and university campuses. Frayed is filled with actionable advice on how to mitigate burnout at the personal level, but far more importantly presents compelling ideas about how to prevent it at the institutional level, offering strategies for starting a process of deep cultural assessment and change. — Dr. Kathleen Fitzpatrick, author of Leading Generously: Tools for Transformation
Powerful
Through powerful narratives and incisive analysis, Frayed exposes the structural and cultural forces that render these roles unsustainable—too often at significant personal cost. This book not only deepens our understanding of leadership in today’s academic landscape, but also issues an urgent call to build more humane, sustainable environments where leaders—and the institutions they serve—can truly thrive. — Dr. Vicki L. Baker, author of Managing Your Academic Career: A Guide to Re-Envision Mid-Career
Concrete
Uncertainty and the chronic stress associated with it is now the norm in higher education. Pope-Ruark’s timely book on leadership burnout in higher education does the important work of bringing visibility to the gendered aspects of burnout for modern women in academic leadership. This book offers concrete steps that faculty, administrators, academic leaders, and most importantly, campuses can take to understand, illuminate, and address burnout for women leaders. — Dr. Dawn Culpepper, University of Maryland
Pre-Launch Resource
Download the Burnout Checklists Now!
A free PDF resource for leaders to identify burnout red flags in yourself, your unit, and your institution.
Coming Soon: The Podcast Episode
Coming Soon: The Book Club Guide
Pre-order Frayed now!
from Johns Hopkins University Press (release date September 22, 2026)