Carolina Coimbra, a black woman, has worked as a doula since 2019, trained by Nurturing Birth.
She holds a degree in Sociology and is in the final stage of completing a master’s in Sociology at ISCTE.
Carolina is the mother of an 8-year-old boy and a 5-year-old girl. It was her first birth that sparked her interest and led her to become an activist for women’s rights in pregnancy and childbirth, as well as in anti-racism.
She is a cofounder and current board member of Associação SaMaNe – Saúde das Mães Negras e Racializadas em Portugal (Health of Black and Racialized Mothers in Portugal), which emerged as a collective in 2020 and became a formal association in 2022.
The collective arose after the murder of George Floyd, when the anti-racist movement in Portugal came together against the violence inflicted on black and racialized people’s bodies.
Together with four other women, she conducted a study to understand the experiences of black and racialized women in Portugal during pregnancy, birth, and the postpartum period (2021–2023). The report with the results is available on the organization’s website: (https://associacaosamane.org/).