Female leaders face numerous challenges and barriers beyond the scope of their position, including biases about their leadership style and personal characteristics, isolation and exclusion, and lack of mentoring, among others. The position of university president has typically been held by White males. The numbers of female university presidents remains disproportionately low, with an even wider gap for Black women and women of color, especially at research-intensive universities. This exploratory study examined statements about key instructional decisions in response to the COVID-19 pandemic from 9 female presidents of research-intensive universities (Carnegie classification R1 and R2). An emergent methodology incorporating elements of dialogic discourse analysis and comparative case study was used to examine the crisis and emergency risk communication styles of these female leaders in order to explore how they mitigated risk in their communications and the differences in decision-making agency exhibited. [Note: The publication year (2021) shown via the URL is incorrect. The correct year is 2020.]