“In 2017 researchers Adam Galinsky and Joe C. Magee of Columbia University described how power and status act as self-reinforcing loops: How much status a person has directly affects whether their ideas are heard. People with high status (the Hollywood producer, the project lead, someone who looks like the existing leader) are met with greater receptivity early on, earning them the time and emotional support to develop nascent ideas into more complete and robust ones. This success then further boosts their status, leading to even more opportunity. Equally, a person of relatively low status — someone who lacks a pedigree or credentials, is too old or too young, is female, or is a person of color — is unlikely get any of the same support, not because their idea was weighed and deemed unworthy, but because it came from a person who was deemed relatively powerless, and therefore unworthy of being heard.”

–How Ava DuVernay Is Finding Blue Oceans in Hollywood by Nilofer Merchant| Harvard Business Review.