If you're a Black woman or person of another marginalized gender who has left the paid labor force since 2021, quit, were pushed out, laid off, stepped back, or retired early, the Exit Project wants your account, in your own words.
Quantitative studies can count how many of us are leaving. They can't tell you how it happened, or where the line falls between what was taken from you and what you chose. Only you can draw that line. This research exists to hold it exactly where you put it, not where an aggregate assumes it should go.
Your response becomes part of a growing body of testimony large enough to argue with the data that treats Black women's exit as a single, flat statistic.
hey, i'm bethany nicole
I'm a thirty-something native New Yorker, an independent scholar, and the founder of Soulwork. I live with chronic illness and ADHD, both of which are load-bearing in a framework built around what depletion costs a person and what it takes to refuse it.
Before Soulwork, I spent fifteen years in project management and workplace experience, and later ran my own consulting agency, providing programming and coaching to ERGs and DEI teams, and advising organizations on workplace experience, hybrid work, and DEI. That work is behind me now.
My independent scholarship rests on the conviction that Black women's labor, under conditions this country has never fully reckoned with, is where the real analysis of work begins.
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Bethany Nicole
Independent Scholar & Founder of Soulwork & The Exit Project