#GENDERFAILS with Adaku Utah
“Part of my divine purpose is making sure that Black people like myself make it to the future!” -Adaku Utah
Listen to Adaku Utah’s #GENDERFAILS Interview Here.
Hi, my name is K. Marshall Green aka @drDrummerBoiG or Dr G. (Pronouns are he/they) Thank you all for visiting #GENDERFAILS where I chat it up with brilliant Black folk from all walks of life about their experiences with gender or being gendered if you will. Have you ever felt like you were doing your gender well? What’s that story? When have you felt like you were failing at gender? How did you know? #GENDERFAILS opens a space for Black folk who represent a spectrum of identities to be in conversation around gender, blackness, queerness, and love. Thank you all for reading/listening. I’m honored to introduce you all to Adaku Utah (All pronouns).
Born in Baltimore, and raised in Festac, Nigeria, I am a proud and humble Igbo queer, non-binary person deeply rooted and shaped by these lands and the organizing and healing legacy I call home.
I enjoy co-cultivating strategic, sustainable, and impactful social justice leaders and organizations. I find a lot of joy working with organizations and organizing campaigns committed to the liberation of people impacted by racism, sexism, transphobia, imperialism, and genocide. I am humbled to have worked locally, nationally, and internationally alongside organizations like the Movement for Black Lives, Soul Fire Farm, the Audre Lorde Project, the Illinois Caucus for Adolescent Health, Harvard University, and more.
I am currently the Senior Manager of Movement Building Programs at the Building Movement Project, a national nonprofit organization that catalyzes social change through research, relationships, and resources. Here I get to work with movement-building organizations on short-term rapid-response
efforts and long-term projects to deepen solidarity within and across networks and ecosystems. I also uplift narratives through the Solidarity Is This podcast, conduct transformative trainings and workshops, and develop resources and tools to catalyze strategic solidarity practices.Most recently, I was the Organizing Director at the National Network of Abortion Funds, building and mobilizing organizing power and movement-building efforts with 90+ member organizations, thousands of individual members, and network leaders across the country and world.
For the past 9 years, I’ve had the honor of co-facilitating Harriet’s Apothecary, an all-Black collective of healers, organizers, and artists committed to embodying Harriet Tubman’s legacy of centering abolition and healing justice in how we organize to create and sustain liberation and transformation.
I am a Senior teacher and coach with BOLD (Black Organizing for Leadership and Dignity), a national leadership training program designed to help rebuild Black social justice infrastructure to organize Black communities more effectively and re-center Black leadership in the U.S. social justice movement.
I also teach and coach with Generative Somatics, a national organization that supports social and climate justice movements in achieving their visions of a radically transformed society by bringing somatic transformation to movement leaders, organizations, and alliances. For 6 years, as a commitment to ending the racism and injustice in the food system, I served as a founding board member of Soul Fire Farm. I have served as a board member of the Women and Girls Collective Action Network, Third Root Education Exchange, and The Black Girl Project and the founding steering committee member and board member of the Chicago Freedom School.
Over the past few years, I’ve been humbled to have been recognized by my community in a number of ways including, 2023–2022 Auburn Seminary Sojourner Truth Reproductive Justice Fellow, 2022 Community Healing Network Community Healer Award, 2021 Experience Life Magazine Changemakers, 2020 Laundromat Project Community Impact Honoree, a 2017 Essence Magazine Woke 100 Change Maker and is a recipient of the 2017 Gye Nyame Empowerment Project My Sister’s Keeper Award, the 2015 Blade of Grass Fellowship, the 2015 Laundromat Project Create Change Fellowship and the 2012 Sexuality Leadership Development Fellowship with the Africa Regional Sexuality Resource Centre in Lagos, Nigeria. I give thanks to my beloved community for all the ways they see and nurture me.
In my spare time, I love playing with my nieces, Rose and Violet, and nerding out about astrology, herbs, erotica, and sci-fi.
-Adaku Utah
“My gender is cute AF…and is definitely evolving. I like to think of my gender as the phases of the moon…sometimes it’s illuminated by light…sometimes it’s hidden because I haven’t grown into who I’ve become…It’s a humbling thing to know and feel so connected to myself…and the way that my gender is in this moment…and there’s still so much that I don’t know…Will I be brave enough and compassionate enough to surrender into more of myself?” -Adaku Utah
“Non-binariness is a real acknowledgment that the binary is a false way of being…What are ways that I have constructed my own binaries? Where am I shackled and where else can I be free?”-Adaku Utah
Adaku Utah can be contacted via email @adaku.utah@gmail.com
Social Medias @soularbliss
If you would like to contact me or be on the show, please email me at: kai.m.green51@gmail.com.
