In a collaborative autoethnographic process, we, three foreign-born female professors from the Republic of Trinidad and Tobago, Kenya, and Korea explore how our personal status as immigrant women of color and social-institutional factors in US higher education affect our experiences in the academy. Based on experiences as graduate students and later as faculty and leaders, we trace the development of three empowering and transforming navigational strategies we utilized to survive and thrive at a US institution--exploiting multifocal lenses, reconfiguring identities, and engaging tempered radicalism. We discuss how the cultivation of a unique standpoint as outsiders/within can be a valuable resource for foreign-born women of color to advance active research agendas and to leverage their position in the academy.