Darnell Moore Keynote Speaker

Author, "No Ashes in the Fire: Coming of Age Black & Free in America”
Leading commentator on marginal identity, youth development and other social justice issues
Formerly, Vice President, Inclusion Strategy at Netflix

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Darnell Moore's Biography

I love community and all that it takes to build one.

I love when people who exist on the edges of the margins within the communities that I am a part of are centered and cared for.

I love to tell the stories that emerge from the lives of people who tend to be talked about (in media, in research, in the public square) but rarely listened to.

I love to build strategies that help to strengthen institutions’ capacity to be human-centered, equitable and just.

I love to collectively build—meaningful relationships, impactful creative interventions, and institutions. This love has taken various shapes over the course of my career which spans more than two decades: writer, educator, author, cultural worker, strategist, community organizer, producer, editor, and institution builder. This love has been at the heart of everything that I do. And I only do what I love.

I love to tell stories. My memoir, No Ashes in the Fire: Coming of Age Black and Free in America, which is about my coming of age as a Black queer youth in Camden, NJ, won the 2019 Lambda Literary Award for Best Memoir in 2019. It was also celebrated as one of the New York Times 100 Notable Books of 2018 as well as selected as a Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers’ pick. My writings have appeared in several books and have been featured in publications including the New York Times, Vanity Fair, Playboy, VICE, The Guardian, The Nation, and EBONY among many others.

I’ve also harnessed my love for storytelling as an editor at sites like The Feminist Wire, CASSIUS and Mic, I directed and hosted, for example, special forums on HIV/AIDS, love and manhood/masculinity. I directed a 4-part mini documentary series exploring Black LGBTQIA+ life in Atlanta for CASSIUS. I was fortunate enough to host Mic’s digital series, “The Movement,” where I told stories about people working to transform race relations across the country. The series was nominated for a Breakthrough Series: Short Form Award at the 2016 IFP Gotham Awards.

Over the past decade, I served as the Head of Strategy and Programs at Breakthrough US, which was a creative hub that used media, art and technologies to shift the public’s understanding of gender norms across the cultural landscape. More recently, I served as Vice President of Inclusion Strategy at Netflix where my team offered creative consultation to executives across the content, studio operations, marketing/communications/PR/awards and animation parts of the business as well as partnered with talent/HR executives to build and forward DEI efforts.

I love thinking big and strategizing solutions for social problems. I’ve been a writer-in-residence at the Center on African American Religion, Sexual Politics and Social Justice at Columbia University; a Founding Fellow at the Annenberg Innovation Lab at the University of Southern California; a Visiting Fellow at Yale Divinity School; and a Visiting Scholar at the Center for the Study of Gender and Sexuality at New York University. I taught courses in the Women and Gender’s Studies and Public Administration departments at Rutgers University, Fordham University, City College of New York City and Vassar College. I am honored to have led and/or participated in several critical dialogues including the 58th Session of the UN Commission on the Status of Women; the 50th Anniversary of the March on Washington National Panel on Race, Discrimination and Poverty; the 2012 Seminar on Debates on Religion and Sexuality at Harvard Divinity School; and was a member of the first U.S. delegation of LGBTQ leaders to Israel/Palestine in 2012 to name several that were important to me.

I love to help build institutions. Along with Beryl Satter and Christina Strasburger, I co-founded the Queer Newark Oral History Project at Rutgers University in 2011. I also worked with Thomas Krever and Lillian Rivera (former leaders at the Hetrick-Martin Institute), and then Mayor Cory Booker’s administration, to open HMI-New Jersey when I was the inaugural chair of the Mayor’s Commission on LGBTQ Concerns. And one of the most inspiring moments during my journey was co-organizing the Black Life Matters Ride to Ferguson in the wake of Mike Brown’s tragic murder and along with Alicia Garza, Patrisee Cullors, and Ayo Tometti (#BlackLivesMatter Co-Founders) assisted in developing the infrastructure for the Black Lives Matter Network.

I love innovating and creating new things. Currently, I am hard at work on my second book, tentatively titled Show You Better Than I Can Tell You: Black Men Freeing Ourselves, as I finish the final season of the award-winning podcast, “Being Seen”. And because I am an Aquarius who doesn’t believe in caging my big dreams, I founded a boutique creative consulting agency, Six Zero Nine Creatives, whose name is an homage to Camden, my hometown, and through which I will house my current and future creative projects.

Building Community Through Vulnerable Conversations on Race, Sexuality, and Gender

While some may find it difficult and uncomfortable to have conversations centered on race, sexuality and gender at home, in their workplaces, in places of learning, in worshiping communities and elsewhere, it is only through the acknowledgement and understanding of our differences that we might better know and relate to others and ourselves. Human difference is not a wall. It is, as the late poet Audre Lorde noted, to be celebrated because it is through our commitment to making space for difference that we can create communities of care, innovation and transformation. This series offers participants an empathic container in which all might explore the depths of their self-identities and those they work or are in community with. Together, participants will discover how such knowledge can grow their empathy, trust and care as well as foster vibrant, connective and inspired environments in which they work, learn, and exist.

Embracing Organizational Transformation: Brave Leadership and Accountable Practices

Organizational transformation, at any scale, begins with visionary and brave leadership. If leaders are not convinced that the organizations they lead can be exemplars where the people and culture are vibrant articulations of an inclusive and innovative vision of a workplace where all can thrive and do work that feeds their minds and spirits, then their organizations will remain homogeneous and innovatively stagnated. This series can delve into an array of transformative practices—executive leadership development/coaching; organizational culture; beginning-to-end employee workplace experience; demystifying DEI; belonging; people management strategies; ERG/BRG capacity building; and connecting business strategy to people strategy.

Changing Times, Facing Change: Social Justice Issues in the US and Abroad

Every generation in the U.S. will face its fair share of progression and retrenchment. In fact, depending on the audience, one community’s understanding of “progression” might easily be rendered problematic. The fight for voting rights for women was once understood as a threat to democracy and electoral politics. The push to end miscegenation laws legally restricting marriages between people of different races was once seen as a move against presumed traditional American values. History offers lots of lessons in that regard. This series is crafted to delve into any number of contemporary social justice concerns—the fight for LGBTQIA rights; women’s reproductive rights; racial equity; climate change, and much else—and how we might wade through history in search of lessons that might compel change today as well as offer strategies that might better allow participants to collectively land on grounds where they might vision and transform the communities we call home.

Darnell Moore on Trevor Noah

Let’s Get Free: A Case for An Abolition Theology

Starting on the Margins: An On Being Conversation with Darnell Moore | SkollWF 2019

MBK Alliance Town Hall Series: Mental Health and Wellness in a Racism Pandemic

Darnell Moore | Culture and Social Change | inbreakthrough.org

And these are our children, too: TEDxBroadStreet

Solidarity in the Flesh: Tools and Tactics

Princeton University

Articles, Media & Podcasts

Responsibility

Being Seen podcast

Books by Darnell Moore

No Ashes in the Fire

Comments & Testimonials

Darnell's insights into the power of imagination and movement work made it a memorable event that resonated with everyone; an inspired gift to a community facing turbulent times. As he poignantly spoke to the audience, it was impossible not to reflect on the changes that have come out of, and continue to extend from, the day-to-day efforts to support individuals and community. His words sparked imagination, hope and confidence in our push toward ending the epidemic.

United States Conference on AIDS