The employment crisis facing Black women across both the public and private sectors has become one of the defining stories of the year. With more than 300,000 Black women leaving or being pushed out of the workforce due to layoffs, increasingly hostile work environments, and DEI rollbacks, the message is clear: corporate America continues to chew up and discard the very workers it has long claimed to champion. Under the Trump administration, this tension has intensified. High-profile Black women leaders such as Lisa Cook, whose tenure on the Federal Reserve Board was publicly threatened, and Carla Hayden, the first woman and first African American Librarian of Congress, who was abruptly fired, have become symbols of a broader rollback. The erasure is loud. Black women are under attack.
“But what happens when a Black woman refuses to struggle as a prerequisite for success?”
Narratives about Black women navigating corporate America and achieving success through leadership and promotion have long circulated in both self-help literature and pop culture. From Minda Harts’ The Memo, currently being adapted into a psychological horror series, and Morgan Stanley advisor Carla A. Harris’ Expect to Win, Strategize to Win, and Lead to Win, to Yvonne Orji’s portrayal of Molly Carter on HBO’s Insecure as a high-powered attorney who pivots to a Black-owned law firm after being repeatedly overlooked in a white, male-dominated space, the message is consistent. Black women are expected to struggle before they succeed, but are ultimately promised financial, romantic, and social fulfillment.
But what happens when a Black woman refuses to struggle as a prerequisite for success? Instead of enduring suffering, she causes it. Enter Harper Stern, played by Myha’la, in HBO’s Industry. The series offers a voyeuristic glimpse into investment banking, where young, ambitious professionals chase money and power while indulging their vices of sex, drugs, and gambling.
When viewers meet Harper, she is one of only two Black people, and the only Black woman, in the new grad program at the fictional investment bank Pierpoint in London. An American from a non-target school, Harper nonetheless navigates the industry with ease, making her presence both undeniable and threatening. Audiences soon learn she lied her way into the program, never having graduated from college, a revelation that frames her ruthlessness as a tool of self-preservation and signals how far she is willing to go to succeed.
Teetering between #girlboss and sociopathic villain, Harper often turns the microscope back on her superiors, navigating the workplace like a high-stakes chess match. Season 1 ends with Harper severing ties with Pierpoint’s female leadership in favor of her managing director, Eric Tao (Ken Leung), after realizing leadership intended to use her as a mascot for an inclusive, rebranded work culture, less of a leader, more as a pet.
Across the series, the power dynamic between Harper and Eric constantly shifts. By Season 3, Harper lands on the Forbes 30 Under 30 list, complete with a complimentary quote from Eric, while Eric finds himself stripped of the institutional power he once relied on. Harper gains her footing as Eric loses his.
Harper carries these transactional dynamics into every relationship she touches, most notably with publishing heiress and favorite frenemy Yasmin Kara-Hanani (Marisa Abela). In Season 3, Harper exploits Yasmin’s naivety, using her as a pawn in a business pursuit involving Pierpoint, a move that ultimately costs Yasmin her role. Harper doesn’t have friends; she has connections, allies, and enemies, and which is which depends entirely on what she needs in the moment.
To watch a young Black woman integrate into the Old Boys’ Club while exhibiting the very traits society deems acceptable, even rewarded, in white men (backstabbing, throwing others under the bus, white-collar crime), and still achieve success when Black women are so often positioned as cautionary tales, destabilizes a moral hierarchy that celebrates white male ruthlessness while pathologizing Black women’s survival.
Harper Stern represents a new workplace archetype for Black women: one who refuses struggle as a prerequisite for success and rejects likability as currency. She does not ask to be spared. She moves strategically, ruthlessly, and unapologetically. Harper is not a Black woman under attack; she is a Black woman who understands power and wields it.
