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It has almost been a year since former Spokane, Washington, NAACP leader Rachel Dolezal was exposed as a white woman who claimed to be black.
But Dolezal, who sparked outrage from critics who said she committed cultural appropriation and fueled conversation about self-identification and the concept of being transracial, said she doesn't have any regrets.
"I don't have any regrets about how I identify. I'm still me and nothing about that has changed," she said during an appearance on the "Today" show on Tuesday.
Dolezal was born to white parents in Lincoln County, Montana, in 1977. She came to media attention last June when her estranged parents publicly said that she is a white woman who was passing as black.
Dolezal later resigned from her position with the NAACP and was dismissed as chair of Spokane's police ombudsman commission. She also resigned from her position as education director at the Human Rights Education Institute in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho, citing discrimination.
"I feel like moving forward," she told Savannah Guthrie. "It's been some work to rebuild and get things back on track with life. Looking at some new opportunities going into 2016."
Dolezal said she has some upcoming speaking engagements and that she recently completed a TED talk.
She also said that she is "looking forward to getting back into racial and social justice work" with plans to write a book about her racial identity and her personal experiences.
"I'm really excited to write the book and to address some of the issues that I've researched for many years, and I hope to eventually get back to teaching," said Dolezal, who previously taught classes in African-American studies at Eastern Washington University.
Dolezal said many people have reached out to her to tell her how they can relate to her and that those testimonies inspired her plans to write a book.
"I've heard a lot of stories from people around the world about their lives being somehow caught between boundary lines of race or culture or ethnicity," she said. "So this larger issue of if you don't fit into one box and if you don't stay there (for) your whole life from birth... what does that look like? Race is such a contentious issue because of the painful history of racism. Race didn't create racism, but racism created race."
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