We were lucky to catch up with Joe’l Simone recently and have shared our conversation below.

Joe’l, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today What’s the backstory behind how you came up with the idea for your business?

The Multicultural Death & Grief Care Academy was born out of both necessity and conviction. For years, I worked within the funeral service and death care industry, an industry that prides itself on professionalism and compassion, yet often overlooks the deep cultural, spiritual, and ancestral nuances that shape how people grieve and honor their dead.

In those spaces, I began to notice a painful pattern: families of color, immigrants, and those from diverse faith and cultural traditions were frequently misunderstood or underserved. Their rituals were dismissed as “different,” their hair and skin care needs were mishandled, and their stories were rarely represented in training materials or classroom conversations. What I witnessed was not malicious but it was systemic, and it revealed a gap that I could no longer ignore.

The Academy began as a vision to fill that gap to educate, equip, and empower professionals across death care, grief care, and related fields to serve all communities with dignity, respect, and cultural humility. It was also deeply personal: my own Gullah Geechee heritage and spiritual path taught me that culture is not just identity ; it’s medicine. “Culture is the Medicine for Grief” became the heartbeat of the Academy because I have witnessed how cultural understanding transforms not only the way we serve others, but how we process loss within ourselves.

What started as a few workshops and conversations has grown into a full academy a global classroom where tradition, scholarship, and compassion meet. Every course, webinar, and series is a step toward reimagining death care as a sacred, inclusive, and culturally competent practice for all.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

Joél Simone, affectionately known as The Grave Woman, brings over a decade of groundbreaking expertise and innovation to the fields of end-of-life, death and grief care. As a sacred grief care practitioner, licensed funeral director and embalmer, award-winning educator and speaker, Joél is dedicated to empowering professionals, organizations and governmental agencies to create and implement culturally sensitive protocols and inclusive practices that honor diverse cultures and traditions.

She is the founder of The Multicultural Death & Grief Care Academy where she offers expert insights into cultural competency and dignified end of life, death and grief care for communities of color empowering organizations to navigate the complexities of serving diverse families, staff and communities with authenticity and respect.

Joél offers customized speaking and consulting services to meet your specific needs. As a leading voice and expert in the field of culturally competent death and grief care, Joél Maldonado aka “The Grave Woman” is the founder of the Multicultural Death & Grief Care Academy, an educational platform dedicated to equipping death care professionals with the tools to serve diverse communities with understanding and compassion. Joél brings years of expertise to the field, empowering funeral directors, embalmers, death doulas, and grief professionals to deliver culturally sensitive services that respect and honor varied traditions and beliefs around death and mourning.

Joél’s insights have been featured in numerous media outlets, including both the New York & LA Times, NPR, Inside Edition, Glamour Magazine, Good Housekeeping and many others where she has shared key perspectives on the importance of cultural competency in funeral service. Additionally, Joél has a robust speaking history, having presented at prestigious industry events such as the American Society on Aging Annual Conference (2025), Teracon (2025), the National Funeral Directors Association International Convention & Expo (2024), the Super Death Care Conference (2024), The Green Burial Conference (2021), and many other prominent gatherings in the death care industry.

Through the Multicultural Death & Grief Care Academy, Joél provides a range of specialized courses covering topics from Black Deathcare Series to courses that explore international funeral traditions, designed to prepare professionals to meet the needs of all families with empathy, respect, and cultural awareness.

Can you tell us about a time you’ve had to pivot?

One of the most meaningful pivots I’ve made in my career came when I decided to change the name of my organization from The Black Death & Grief Care Academy to The Multicultural Death & Grief Care Academy.

When I first launched the Academy, my vision was deeply rooted in addressing the lack of representation, respect, and understanding for Black and African-descended traditions within death care and grief work. The name reflected my lived experience, my heritage, and my initial mission to bring visibility to the cultural, spiritual, and ancestral wisdom that had been overlooked in mainstream education.

As the Academy grew, something powerful began to happen professionals, students, and organizations from all over the world reached out, sharing how much they resonated with the work. They came from Indigenous, Asian, Latinx, Middle Eastern, and European backgrounds, all expressing the same desire: to learn how to serve their communities with cultural sensitivity and dignity.

That was my moment of pivot. I realized that what began as a call to uplift one community had evolved into a movement that could embrace all communities. The heart of my mission hadn’t changed it had simply expanded. By renaming the Academy, I wanted to reflect that inclusivity, to honor every culture’s relationship with death, mourning, and remembrance.

The pivot wasn’t just about branding it was about alignment. The Multicultural Death & Grief Care Academy represents what this work truly is: a space where every culture, every tradition, and every story has value. It’s a reminder that when we broaden our lens, we deepen our compassion.

Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?

One of the hardest but most liberating lessons I’ve had to learn and unlearn is that not everything is rooted in racism.

As a Black woman working in death care and grief education, my experiences have undeniably been shaped by systemic inequities, microaggressions, and cultural misunderstandings. For a long time, it felt like every uncomfortable encounter or barrier I faced had to be a direct reflection of bias or racism. And while that’s sometimes true, I began to realize that viewing everything through that singular lens kept me in a state of defensiveness rather than openness.

Through deeper reflection and cross-cultural dialogue often with students and colleagues from around the world I began to see that grief, misunderstanding, and disconnection show up in every culture. Some things weren’t about color at all; they were about humanity, communication, and the universal discomfort we have around death.

Unlearning that everything is rooted in racism didn’t mean denying my reality it meant expanding my awareness. It allowed me to meet others where they are, to teach from compassion instead of reactivity, and to hold space for healing conversations that move beyond pain into progress.

That shift changed my leadership and the way I teach. It helped me build The Multicultural Death & Grief Care Academy not as a place of separation, but as a space of restoration; where we can name harm, honor difference, and still come together in the shared truth that culture is the medicine for grief.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.thegravewoman.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thegravewoman/?hl=en
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/thegravewoman/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/thegravewoman/
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/thegravewoman
• Other: Courses, workshops and bookings https://joe-l-maldonado.mykajabi.com/courses?_gl=1%2Ackfi0x%2A_gcl_aw%2AR0NMLjE3MzU3MDQ1MjAuQ2owS0NRaUF5YzY3QmhEU0FSSXNBTTk1UXp1NGl6UURSU1dCZjJkb25PWjN4eGNJSUZtOHdmT2E4eWdNQUtlaXBsR0RsYktIcWhraEYtd2FBa05KRUFMd193Y0I.%2A_gcl_au%2AMTExNDU1NDI5Ni4xNzM1NzA0NTIw

Image Credits

Joe’l Simone Maldonado
De Anne R. Anthony