ABOUT

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Natachi Onwuamaegbu is an entrepreneur and journalist who has written about race, art, and culture at The Washington Post, Al Jazeera English, Cosmopolitan, The Boston Globe, and more. She aims to cover underreported stories, issues, and communities that may otherwise go unheard. 

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Currently, Onwuamaegbu is the CEO and co-founder of the Ndeza Collective's "Braiding Nairobi," a multiplatform storytelling site which aims to tell the stories and complexities of the female hair braiders in Kenyatta Market, Nairobi. She is now creating an app in which clients can order these hair braiders directly to their homes in real time. This project was first funded as a part of Onwuamaegbu's Fulbright-National Geographic Fellowship. 

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As one of five global 2022-2023 Fulbright-National Geographic Storytelling Fellows, Onwuamaegbu explored the economic opportunities in Nairobi’s Kenyatta market by interviewing female hair braiders and the key players who make decisions that dictate the lives of the hair braiders. Kenyatta market is a place for Kenyan women to find economic liberation – young women can start businesses and support their families – but it can also be a place of economic entrapment. Women are paid impossibly low wages under bosses with no legal responsibility and have no healthcare or job security. Natachi created a series of articles profiling 17 people along with creating a series of videos, photo collections, audio pieces and a magazine. These works were published on her National Geographic Field Notes blog.

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Natachi is also producing and starring in "Crushing," a show of monologues about messy romantic love, which just completed a sold-out run in NYC. A documentary about the show is in production.

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In 2022, Onwuamaegbu graduated with Honors from Stanford University where she majored in Political Science and minored in Creative Writing and African and African American Studies. She has completed the first draft of her book, "How to Fall in Sane," through Stanford’s highly selective Honors in the Arts program.