Her Story
About Valoria
Valoria Walker is an end-of-life doula educator, entrepreneur, and aging services professional with experience dating back to 2016. She works as an End-of-Life Doula Educator and certification educator with the International End of Life Doula Association (INELDA), designing and delivering training and hosting peer mentoring. She founded Doula by Destiny, where her focus includes advanced care planning and community education. Valoria holds a master's degree in the aging community, which she completed in 2020. Earlier in her career, she spent 17 years as a desktop PC technician in information technology at a local hospital and served as director of activities and entertainment at a senior nursing and assisted living facility. She is a member of the Maryland Gerontology Association and INELDA. Her notable honors include winning the AARP boom competition and having her writing published in Oprah Magazine.
Her Interview
Ten minutes with Valoria
01What do you attribute your success to?
I contribute my success to the way that my mother raised me. Single mom, three children, dedicated, worked every day, got to work on time, made ends meet. That underlying foundation of independence as an African-American woman... her strength and her ability to move through society, only having an 11th grade education... that really is why I continued with my education, getting my master's degree, and just her influence in the way that she lived her life.
02What’s the best career advice you’ve ever received?
Not to stop. To look at the barriers as challenges, and to move through them. That fear is just a dark, unfamiliar place, but once you move through it, you begin to know your surrounding. It becomes awareness for you to just continue to move through, and once you come out on the other side of it, you realize that it's just really an unfamiliar place that you have to go through, and once you learn what you need to learn in it, it's not unfamiliar anymore. Therefore, there's no fear to go through it.
03What advice would you give to young women entering your industry?
Continue to move through areas of uncertainty. Practice mindfulness and self-care... practicing some type of affirmation or meditation, daily as a routine to take care of yourself is very important. Continue learning everything that you can learn, identify what your specialty is going to be... choose your specialty. Hone in on that, learn as much as you can learn about that, and then just go out in society and allow the universe to direct your path without fear.
04What are the biggest challenges or opportunities in your field right now?
The biggest challenges are education. A lot of people don't know what an end-of-life doula is... it's a challenge of getting the education of the role of an end-of-life doula to communities.
05What values are most important to you in your work and personal life?
Integrity. Building a trusted relationship. Speak the truth. If you don't know the answer, say you don't know the answer. Say that I'll find out the answer for you. And I back to you. Just be open to other people's truths, even though you may have a bias against it. It's their lens. You don't have to look or judge someone through your lens. Just be open to what they are saying.
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