This study explored community college middle managers' experiences around voice and silence, empowerment, and engagement. Middle managers play a critical role in an organization's ability to accomplish its strategic goals (Dopson, 1992; Tengblad & Vie, 2012), and they are at the center of the challenges in higher education (Pepper & Giles, 2015). The community college mission is centered on workforce development and equity in educational access, serving students and the community in contributing to the economy and social development. Despite its important role as a human-centered, mission-driven system, community colleges face decreases in state-funding, restrictions in federal funding, and steep declines in enrollment and lost tuition income, leaving fewer resources (Mayfield et al., 2021). Middle managers are tasked with executing organizational responsibilities and communicating changes while serving the largest proportion of under-resourced students in the U.S. (Mayfield et al., 2021). Yet, we know little about how these pivotal mid-level leaders perceive their roles in delivering on the community college mission or how about the meaning they give their lived experiences around voice and empowerment in their institutional context. This study takes a phenomenological approach. Data came from semi-structured qualitative interviews of 15 middle managers from six community colleges around the U.S. Findings reflect that these mid-level leaders saw five key roles they play irrespective of their job title or description: serving students, developing staff, partnering with administration, performing bureaucratic tasks, and being an ambassador for the college. Most participants were motivated to use voice because of their drive for social justice, speaking up about equity concerns for the students and staff. Lack of access to decision-makers, an organizational culture of fear, and sometimes inexperience or job security concerns contributed to silence. Individuals who felt they had full voice (could speak out and get heard) also felt empowered, as those whose voices were sought out and who had more autonomy. The middle managers in this study all brought to their work an intrinsic engagement with the community college mission; however, engagement with their leaders and the institution depended on voice and empowerment that they connected to relationships with leaders and organizational culture. These findings point to a host of implications for actions that senior leaders can take to benefit from the existing resources of their middle managers' knowledge, skills, and commitment to students' success. Traditional structures and processes of power in higher education appear inadequate for genuine inclusion of stakeholders with full voice that promote engagement with delivering on the institutional missions. An alternative to hierarchical bureaucracy with compartmentalized "shared governance" is a more egalitarian holacracy (Kumar & Mukherjee, 2018) with genuinely shared leadership (Holcombe et al., 2021), which might better give full voice to, and make full use of the knowledge and expertise of, middle managers at the heart of community colleges. [The dissertation citations contained here are published with the permission of ProQuest LLC. Further reproduction is prohibited without permission. Copies of dissertations may be obtained by Telephone (800) 1-800-521-0600. Web page: http://bibliotheek.ehb.be:2222/en-US/products/dissertations/individuals.shtml.]