This chapter utilizes the lens of a personal critical reflection, adopting my position as an academic of colour to consider the challenges of navigating academic spaces and academic expectations. The chapter explores historic silencing of underrepresented voices, who aim to succeed in spaces not necessarily designed for their success. Dialogue focuses on the prevalence of Eurocentric norms, and power dynamics, drawing on the work of Michel Foucault to illuminate the imbalance in knowledge creation and knowledge validation from the Global South. Crenshaw’s intersectional lens is offered as a means of understanding the complexity of the exclusion experienced by scholars from the Global South. The challenge of personal justification and the viability of proof is scrutinized within this context, employing Bandura’s thoughts on the agentic personality, critiquing the framing of scholars of colour as having to continually justify their inclusion in academic spaces even as they contribute to the diversification and enrichment of knowledge production. The chapter closes with a set of strategies which scholars of colour utilize to find their places and to identify their voices.