About

Natalie Devora

Natalie Devora is an activist who practices a kindness-first approach in all the causes she undertakes. As a proud Oakland native who grew up during the Black Panther movement, she overcame several adversities as she writes in her memoir, ‘Black Girl, White Skin,’ while practicing radical compassion in her self-assumed role as an activist and voice for people with albinism, women and people of color, underserved communities, and those struggling with self-acceptance and authentic self-expression.

As a proud Black woman, Natalie has centered lived experience as the foremost testament to every single person’s resilience and uniqueness. Through her activism, coaching, mentorship, and sensitivity training, Natalie has used communication - both written and verbal - as a tool to build bridges, foster human connection, enable self-directed healing, and empower those who might need a voice outside their own to speak for them.

Her harrowing memoir, ‘Black Girl, White Skin,’ recounts her fight to separate herself from familial incest and enmeshment, societal diktats, and having to show up as a proud Black woman with albinism, an identity she owns completely and fearlessly. Her transformative experiences began when she was invited to be senior editor of the groundbreaking journal, ‘Aché: A Journal for Lesbians of African Descent,’ by Lisbet Tellefsen, one of the journal’s founders. Her instruments of healing have been her love of writing and editing, and Natalie has used them as tools of change in the decades of activism and coaching she has under her belt.

Contributing to community is very dear to Natalie, and she began to write about albinism to spread greater awareness about the condition, starting with attending her first NOAH – National Association for Albinism and Hypopigmentation – conference in 2014. She moderated a workshop for People of Color at the conference, and through this experience, she found solidarity and support in the very community she aspired to empower.

Through her activism, Natalie is helping spread compassionate awareness of albinism on an international level. Her lifelong search for awareness about her own condition, when information and writing on the condition were seldom available, made her even more determined to become an agent of change through her lived experience.

On December 18, 2014, the United Nations officially recognized the observance of International Albinism Awareness Day. The first celebrations took place June 13th 2015. To have the United Nations recognize the importance of albinism and the need to provide greater awareness was and continues to be significant to Natalie. When she was invited to attend the pan-African conference on albinism in Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania, Natalie leaped at the opportunity. This equipped her with expanded awareness about albinism through firsthand accounts of those living with the condition that she met at the conference.

Once she returned from East Africa, Natalie realized it was time to get serious about writing her own story. She wanted it to become a beacon of hope for those she shared deep kinship with, as also help equip those outside of the albinism community become more aware of and develop greater sensitivity towards albinism. Her toolkit for this project included the rich connections she had made in the albinism community, personal journals that she has maintained ever since her childhood, and her personal commitment to herself to confront her own trauma and write about it unflinchingly.

During the writing of her memoir, Natalie also served as a volunteer with NOAH specifically to launch, coordinate, and nurture the International Albinism Awareness Day program (IAAD). Natalie is invited to read from the book internationally, her writing style deliberate that lends itself to reading from the book organically, a paean to the oral storytelling tradition passed down to her by her elders. Her book, ‘Black Girl, White Skin’ was published in 2018, and is highly critically acclaimed for both her writing style and the empowerment that comes from courageously telling your story without obfuscating harsh truths of personal experiences.

Writing and speaking about Blackness, albinism, and advocacy for minority rights remain dear to Natalie. Compassion as her default approach in all her training and mentoring continues to guide Natalie, as she continues to raise greater awareness about albinism. Personally, Natalie also engages with writing communities in the Bay Area, lending her expertise in sensitivity training and counselling to help extended communities become more grounded in their lived experience and the lived experience of others around them.

Natalie believes each of us has what we need inside of ourselves to heal and break the cycle of intergenerational trauma, and it all begins with compassion: compassion to ourselves, first and foremost, and then to the world around us. Through decades of learning and finetuning her approach to be an agent of healing to the world around her, Natalie is living proof that kindness can move mountains. And sometimes, that is all it takes: to heal, to empower, and to create ripples of change that cascade out into the world.

Natalie Devora lives in Alameda, CA. Natalie loves gardening, writing extensively, giving readings, participating in literary festivals, traveling, and being in community with other writers. She is a proud mother and grandmother to an expanding brood, both familial and community. If you would like to work with Natalie, write her a note to nataliedevora@gmail.com.

Natalie's memoir, published by BookBaby

Professional Highlights:

  • Speaker at the Albinism in America Summit

  • Keynote at Bay Area Activist Conference

  • Featured in "Voices of Advocacy" Magazine