Lead from the Outside is peppered with stories of people who were the first to accomplish a considerable feat: Stacey Abrams’s father, Robert, was a first-generation college graduate. Abrams’s sister Leslie was appointed as a federal judge when she was 39, the first Black woman to have that distinction in Georgia. Shirley Franklin, one of Abrams’s many mentors, was the first woman and the first Black woman to become mayor of Atlanta. Simone Bell, Abrams’s colleague in the Georgia House of Representatives, was the first openly lesbian Black woman to serve in a state legislature. Sam Park, Abrams’s former intern, became the first openly gay man and the first Korean American Democrat to serve in a state legislature. Teresa Wynn Roseborough was the first Black woman to make partner at the law firm where Abrams worked.

Abrams writes that “it’s the twenty-first century and long past time for firsts and seconds” (176). She means that minority leadership remains a novelty as positions of power and consequence are most often held by members of the majority—namely white, straight men. She argues that it takes a great deal of confidence or even defiance for a member of a minority group to aspire to more.