Lucia Nader is a Brazilian political scientist and activist, with expertise in the field of democracy, social change and human rights. She has been researching and working with activists, NGOs and donors for nearly 30 years.
Her PhD research focuses on the enablers of a regenerative activism – one that can renew, restore and revitalise itself at individual, organisational and movement levels.
Lucia is one of our Aura Fellows, having completed our holistic nine-module programme designed to nurture and empower female leaders. In this Aura Spotlight interview, we delve into her experience.
How has Aura transformed your relationship with yourself?
Aura has brought me closer to myself as a woman, and to my Brazilian roots. I’ve been on this journey of looking for the feminine — deepening the feminine — for the last decade.
Ten years ago, I was an Executive Director of a human rights organisation in Brazil and suffered from burnout. I decided to step back, leave the work I loved, and leave Brazil to search for balance.
I come from a very masculine family with five brothers and a strong Lebanese father. Part of the reason I’m an activist today is because I had to be an activist in my own home: I had to be an activist to be heard.
It gave me some good skills, for sure — but it also led me to act in a patriarchal way within the world. When I became an executive director, this only strengthened my masculine side.
Aura came to me at the end of this cycle, offering a way to acknowledge and honour this personal transformation.
How has Aura helped change your perspective on activism?
Aura has helped deepen my understanding and my embodiment of what I’ve been studying, and the activism that I’ve been doing for nearly 30 years.
Activism often embodies masculine qualities, and what I’m understanding now is the need to strengthen power across three levels: individually, organisationally, and systemically.
The first level is “power within” — the inner strength that makes you wake up every day and be an activist. How do you foster and sustain that? In my case — I’m from a privileged white background in Brazil — I choose to be an activist. But for many, this is not a choice. Women are drawn to it through personal trauma: experiencing racism or their family murdered. In both cases, how do we nurture and sustain this inner power?
The second level is “power with” — once you are part of an organisation, how do you sustain that? What are the structures, processes and policies that foster collective power? I learnt from my experience building a large organisation that many processes can deplete energy and power. Bureaucracy, policy conflicts, and inefficiencies drain collective strength over time.
The third level is “power for” — how can the relationship between funders and NGOs foster and sustain power? There’s often a power imbalance here, where activists spend much of their time managing burnout, handling bureaucracy, and reporting to funders instead of creating systemic change.
In many cases, there is a depletion of power across all three levels. Aura focuses largely on the first level — “power within” — addressing this need and leak of energy.
The question is: how do we strengthen and sustain power across all three levels, so we can work better internally and externally?
One experience from Aura that felt particularly transformative?
Two moments stand out for me.
The first came when one of the women in our circle shared that she facilitated circles to feel less lonely.
In the same session, someone said that circles are “both treasure boxes and oracles”. I thought that was an amazing way to put it. When we sit in a circle with other women, we bring both our baggage and our treasures.
We create an oracle: envisioning together why we are here and what we want to create for the future. This was a big aha moment. It was especially powerful coming just a week before I held my own circle with 12 other women.
The second powerful moment was realising the importance of acknowledging structural discrimination. Being part of Aura alongside women from the Amazon and violent, marginalised communities in South Africa — who are threatened every day — was a visceral reminder of my privileges. I believe in the need of highlighting the structural discrimination in every single group that we exist in. This is key.
Because there’s a very real chance of this being a conversation among privileged white women who meditate together every month. It can easily become an elite, alienated, white field. But Aura’s diversity addresses these issues openly. It added a grounding and much-needed reality check, making our conversations all the more richer.
What does feminine wisdom mean to you?
The feminine questions single answers. In the West, we have a very linear, scientific approach to life: if you want to achieve this result, take these steps, and measure the impact in this way. There’s only space for the rational.
But the feminine allows room for complexity, contradictions, and other dimensions of life. It challenges this linear, objective, rational view of the world. It engages spirituality, subjectivity, vulnerability, sorority, and recognising our multiple identities in the everyday. Feminine wisdom involves a whole new way of being that includes the heart and the body, not only the mind.
I'm currently researching regenerative activism; what this means compared to resilience. I believe it relates to the feminine. Resilience implies pushing forward within a broken system; that you have to keep marching on, no matter what.
It means maintaining the status quo that led us to this need to be resilient in the first place. It perpetuates the system.
One of the women I interviewed for research I carried out as independent consultant, an amazing black American activist said, “When Covid hit, we said, enough of this bullsh*t of resilience! We have to address the structural causes. My parents and my ancestors had to be resilient to survive and bring us here: today we need more.”
Several women activists have been telling me: it's not about resilience, it's about transformation. Regeneration comes from nature — it's about transformation. Regeneration lets what needs to die, die, creating compost for new growth. This cyclical transformation is inherently feminine.
One piece of advice you would give to another woman starting her Aura journey?
Enjoy it. It’s extremely rich. It will be a pivotal moment in your life where you will meet many amazing women. Enjoy and embrace the uncertainty of being part of an Aura circle.
For further reading by Lucia — “Regenerative activism: reimagining power in the human rights field”