What To Know
- Nkechi Diallo, formerly known as Rachel Dolezal, has announced she is now a certified sex coach.
- Diallo gained national attention in 2015 for falsely claiming to be Black.
- The controversy led to her resignation from the NAACP in 2015 and a legal name change in 2017.
Nkechi Diallo, the disgraced former NAACP official, formerly known as Rachel Dolezal, is embarking on a new career as a sex coach.
Diallo shared the news on Instagram on Saturday (September 12), writing, “I’m thrilled to share that I’ve graduated from the Sexology Institute’s 300+ hour certification program — and that Bandwidth, my online intimacy and relationship coaching practice, is officially open!”
“This work is personal,” she continued. “As a single mom of three boys, I know what hypervigilance, burnout, and carrying the mental load do to connection — and I believe joy, closeness, and aliveness in your body aren’t luxuries. They’re capacities we can design, develop, and expand.
Alongside the caption, Diallo shared a video slideshow of herself in her graduation cap and gown, holding a desk nameplate that read, “Certified Sex Coach.”
She went on to describe her new company, saying it is “for the people who’ve poured into everyone else: single parents, parents of neurodivergent kids, and folks whose work lives at the margins. Together we clear the static, make room for what matters, and expand your bandwidth for a life that’s authored — not absent or performed.”
Diallo made headlines in 2015 when she was accused of lying about her ethnicity. For years, Diallo claimed she was Black, though she was actually born to white parents. Her mom and dad, Ruthanne and Larry Dolezal, told The Spokesman-Review in June 2015 that their daughter started to “disguise herself” after the family adopted four Black children.
After the controversy first became public, Diallo denied the accusations. She later admitted that her parents are white but said she ‘identified’ as Black. In June 2015, she stepped down as President of the Spokane chapter of the NAACP after a petition called for her firing.
That same month, the Spokane City Council voted unanimously to remove Diallo from her position as chair of the Office of the Police Ombudsman Commission in Spokane. The Inlander (a publication to which Diallo had contributed) also cut ties with her.
The drama was covered in the 2018 Netflix documentary The Rachel Divide, which followed Diallo’s family and critics as they reckoned with the aftermath of a national debate about her racial identity.
“If people feel misled or deceived, then sorry that they feel that way,” Diallo told Vanity Fair at the time. “But I believe that’s more due to their definition and construct of race in their own minds than it is to my integrity or honesty, because I wouldn’t say I’m African American, but I would say I’m Black, and there’s a difference in those terms.”
She legally changed her name to Nkechi Amare Diallo in 2017, telling Today that she made the change “in order to be seen for my qualifications and experience rather than just seen for the tabloid publicity that I got in 2015.”