One of her first research papers at Duke was on the topic of diversity in leadership, which found that the majority of Americans expected business leaders to be white and thought more highly of them.
[5] She said that due to the appointment of Barack Obama, "much of the feedback was not critical of the theory or of the analysis, but people doubted that the phenomenon mattered, that it was even relevant for organizational studies.
[6] A few years later, Shelby Rosette published a study which concluded that the negative stereotype surrounding women as "sensitive" often benefited those at the most senior levels of organizations.
[1] In January 2012, Shelby Rosette and Andrew Carton from Pennsylvania State University began examining the differences in media representations of leadership between black and white college football quarterbacks.
[11] In August 2020, Shelby Rosette was the lead author of a study that reaffirmed that Black women with natural hairstyles were less likely to get job interviews.