Malkia Devich Cyril

Malkia Devich Cyril

Leading Edge Fellow

Alum 2023 | Fellow 2023

Malkia Devich-Cyril is a writer, public speaker, and award-winning activist on issues of digital rights, narrative power, Black liberation, and collective grief. They spearheaded the national grassroots efforts of the Net Neutrality campaign. The former executive director of MediaJustice, Malkia now serves as a senior fellow at MediaJustice and at Philanthropic Initiative for Racial Equity. Their writing has been published in outlets such as Atlantic, WIRED, Washington Post, and The Guardian, and they have appeared in documentaries including 13th, Outfoxed, and Miss Representation. 

They have a vision to create a Radical Loss Movement, mobilizing California’s bereaved Black, Indigenous, Latinx, and other communities of color to build a

radical practice of grief that can fuel transformative grievance and governance to replace racialized policies and practices that punish and disenfranchise BIPOC grief. The focus of Malkia’s work is to transform the conditions for mourning in public schools, prisons, and popular movements, and catalyze that grief as a tool for change. They examine how prisons continue to contribute to mortality for people of color and Black people in particular; and how movements can supercharge our capacity for transformative change by radicalizing grief.