Dayan Kodua

Dayan Kodua is an actress, speaker, author, and founder of the Gratitude Verlag. She was born in Ghana and grew up in Kiel. After completing her studies as an economic assistant, Dayan followed her heart and studied acting in Berlin and Los Angeles.

In addition to her work as an actress for TV, film, and theater (including "Tatort," "Unter Verdacht," "Fleisch ist mein Gemüse," "Hallo Ella," "Mephisto," the award-winning "Devil inside me") and as a voice actor, she advocates for empowering People of Colour and making them more visible as role models.

In 2014, she therefore published the photo book "My Black Skin: Schwarz. Erfolgreich. Deutsch", initiated a traveling exhibition and corresponding workshops. It is particularly important to Dayan to make children aware of their inner strength. She addresses this topic, among other things, in her children's books "Odo" (2019) and "Odo und der Beginn einer großen Reise" (2021), which she wrote and publishes through her own publishing company.

In collaboration with Random House USA, Dayan translated and published children's books such as "Emmanuel's Dream - The True Story of Emmanuel Ofosu Yeboah" by Laurie Ann Thompson, "I Am Enough" by Grace Byers. Other books that have been published through her publishing company include the two NY Times bestsellers "Ich singe dich von den Sternen zu mir herunter". In the fall, further children's books will be published, such as "Drum Dream Girl" by Margarita Engle and "Dreamers" by Yuyi Morales, also an NY Times bestseller.

At the end of August 2022, Dayan published the second part of her photo book under the title "My Black Skin: Lebensreisen". She initiated a traveling exhibition, which will start at the Altonaer Museum Hamburg and then be exhibited at the Berlin Police Headquarters. With this, Dayan wants to draw attention to the issue of racial profiling and show that Black Germans also hold great and important professional positions in society and work to positively change the narrative of society.