Our article examines the challenges that “outsiders” face as academic leaders in higher education, with a special emphasis on the specific complications prevailing in the rhetoric and composition fields within English studies. We survey descriptive statistics and historical evidence to locate several of the problems confronting women and others newly and provisionally admitted to—and more often, still excluded from—the highest levels of academic leadership. Then, we bring together feminist-revisionist advocacy tools and Ernest Boyer’s alternative vision for “engaged scholarship” to suggest ways that leadership work formerly categorized as simply administrative duty or mere service be recognized for its broad-ranging impact both on campuses and the public domain.