About Nia

As a Black trans youth who spent most of her childhood in foster care, Nia Clark consistently struggled to find acceptance and support from the adults around her. Channeling that lived experience, she has spent nearly 20 years changing systems from within as a consultant, trainer, direct service provider, researcher, and LGBTQ+ youth advocate. From 2006-2014, she was a residential counselor and Therapeutic Crisis Intervention (TCI) trainer at The Home for Little Wanderers, one of the nation's oldest youth-serving agencies.

From 2015-2017 Nia was the Mentoring Coordinator at LifeWorks, the youth development and mentoring program at the Los Angeles LGBT Center, where she was responsible for overseeing nearly 50 active one-to-one matches between LGBTQ+ youth and adults each year. In 2016, she was the consulting producer of the Emmy-nominated MTV documentary, TRANSFORMATION, a film featuring herself and six trans & gender diverse youth. Nia is currently Senior Specialist of Training & Mentorship at Human Rights Campaign Foundation where she creates and facilitates economic empowerment programs such as Next Level, a 12-week virtual course that provides skills-based education and resources to LGBTQ+ young adults navigating biased employment and financial systems who desire more economic stability.

She additionally works as a trainer and technical assistance consultant at the National Mentoring Resource Center to develop more inclusive mentoring services to LGBTQ+ youth and mentors across the U.S. As an independent investigator for the Nebraska Center for Research on Children, Youth, Families, and Schools (CYFS) at University of Nebraska-Lincoln and the Interpersonal Violence Research Laboratory (IVRL) at University of Michigan, Nia assists with multiple research projects aimed at preventing substance use, intimate partner violence, family rejection, and the commercial sexual exploitation of minoritized youth and young adults. She was also a contributing author to Oxford University's 2022 textbook publication Social work practice with the LGBTQ community: The intersection of history, health, mental health and policy factors (2nd ed.).

As an activist for Black trans women and foster youth, Nia is regularly sought after for various speaking engagements, panels, podcasts, and local & national conferences. She is also a record-breaking three-time Point Foundation Scholar and obtained her master's degree in Advanced Standing Clinical Social Work from Simmons University in Boston.

SPEAKING

PHOTOS