By Bryan Saye | FāVS News Reporter
“Leading Toward Liberation: How to Build Cultures of Thriving in Higher Education” is an examination of how leaders — whether they have a title in front of their name or not — can learn to lead with empathy, compassion and accompaniment. The book focuses heavily on Catholic social teaching, specifically the preferential option for the poor, using the real-life example of the University of Central America (UCA) martyrs as a reference point.
The book was written by Annmarie Caño, a Gonzaga University psychology professor and licensed clinical psychologist whose work is informed by 25 years of experience in higher education. Caño is a two-time Fellow of the American Psychological Association and has served in academic leadership roles at public and private institutions, including as a dean and associate provost.
Her book was released in July 2025 with Johns Hopkins University Press. She recently sat down with FāVS News, where she discussed the book’s central premise, her writing journey, challenging aspects of her book and what’s next.
What inspired you to write this book, and what is the central message or takeaway you hope readers get from it?
I’ve spent my entire professional career in academia and higher ed, which is notorious for not training people to be leaders. I became a dean during COVID, and so I entered at a crisis time and saw that there were some skills that were needed in caring for people — not invading people’s privacy, but to think of leading as healing. And that’s the concept I started with, that we need healing leadership.
Was there a particular moment or discovery that changed the direction of the book?
When I went down to El Salvador [the location of the UCA Martyrs], I thought, “This is going to help me see what liberation looks like in the place where it all happened.” I was focused on the leadership of UCA. But I saw it wasn’t just about the leaders, but it was also about the community members. Now, I think, “Of course it is!” But I was too focused on the people with the title, power and authority.
There was a lot of oppression and name-calling as the powerful labeled the lower-class as Marxist or communist when the communities were simply looking for decent wages and to be with their families. It was the community’s witness that fed into the leadership at the UCA. It was a symbiotic relationship, where the community drove the leaders to use their authority to enter into the struggle the common people were experiencing. So, I would say it was that first trip, seeing and experiencing it, that changed the book to be more about the relationship between leaders and the communities rather than just the leaders.
What’s something people may find challenging about your book and its topic?
If we applied the UCA martyrs’ lessons today, it would require leaders to do a lot of inner work to undo the oppressive lessons they might have learned by just being in the world. They would have to strip themselves of the glamour of leadership and the glory of having a title. The UCA martyrs show that none of that is worth anything if you don’t love your people.
One of the central elements of liberatory leadership is having a preferential option for the poor, which is part of Catholic social teaching. Nothing about it is controversial except when you try to enact it. Because then we have to center everything we do as leaders on how it affects the poorest and most marginalized in our society.
You don’t earn the right to be treated with dignity; you have it by virtue of being human. God loves everybody equally. That doesn’t mean that God doesn’t take sides. Think of a parent with two kids fighting: If the bigger one is bullying the smaller one, you’re going to break up that fight. That’s kind of like the preferential option for the poor. I think that if God did not take sides, then God is essentially siding with the oppressor.
What was the research process like? Did anything surprise you along the way?
I’m a psychologist by training, and I read many disciplines outside of psychology to gain a deeper understanding for this book, including a lot of theology. I was excited by the fact that liberation praxis transcends disciplines — that theology, sociology, psychology, history and even political science all feed into the practice and doing of liberation
[Ignacio] Martín-Baró (founder of Liberation Psychology) taught that to understand how people think, feel and interact with others, you have to understand the context they’re currently living in and the history that led up to it. It’s a much more expansive view of psychology.
How was the writing process? And what kind of response have you received?
It’s currently in its third printing, so it’s resonating with readers. I’d never written a book before; all of my scholarship was peer-reviewed journal articles, where the study takes a long time, and then you have to publish it. I’d never written a book, so learning how to write a book was interesting.
Are you working on your next project already? What’s next for you?
I’m currently working on a follow-up to “Leading Toward Liberation” that focuses on “accompaniment.” While I do provide a little guidance and advice in this book, it’s a lot to put into one chapter. The next book will be more fleshed out so that people have a better idea of how to enact it.
For example, accompaniment can be displayed in different ways. If you have authority over that person — like a teacher with a student — you have to recognize that how you approach the situation is going to be read through that power differential. Part of accompaniment is building the capacity to have empathy for somebody else.
Are there any final thoughts you have about your book? Something you’d like to highlight?
I’d like people to know that Catholic social teaching is at the root of it. I don’t mean that to be an exclusionary perspective, either. To live a fully human life and to reach our potential — whether you believe it’s God’s will for us or not — it’s all the same. It’s a universal drive we all have to feel liberated and free.
