Bio

Nia grew up on the Northside of Chicago in a large family of musicians, actors, writers, and activists. With so much creative energy surrounding her, Nia found herself doing it all - acting in plays, making ceramics, drawing comics, and playing the drums. In fifth grade, Nia’s favorite teacher asked her mother in a defining moment, “How does it feel to be the parent of a Renaissance girl?”

In high school, Nia found even more things she loved to do. She developed an interest in photography, and got her first fancy film camera on her seventeenth birthday. She took improv classes at Second City. She went to the Sundance Film Festival in Utah with her best friend and made a short documentary about their time there. In college, Nia majored in theater at Occidental College in Los Angeles, and found herself drawn to the program’s design courses, including lighting, costume, and set design. She loved directing and wrote an original full-length play for her senior thesis. Her favorite courses, however, were outside of her major. The creative non-fiction writing and printmaking classes she took were revelatory, and left Nia questioning her choice of major as a second semester senior.

When she graduated from Occidental, Nia moved back to Chicago and began to work at a local music school. She started the band Midnight Moxie with her sister Meg and her best friend Sarah, wrote songs, and played lots of small clubs in the area. She designed window displays at a women’s clothing boutique in Lincoln Square. She got her first fancy digital camera and took a photography course. Eventually, her music school gig led to a full-time box office job at a local venue, where she soon became a house manager and intern coordinator. While in this role, Nia took a graphic design course to help out with the venue’s marketing materials, and once again, she found herself completely enamored of a new art form. She started designing most of the venue’s posters and marketing graphics, and when the owner opened more Chicago-area venues, she created visuals for them, as well. Ultimately, she decided that working nights was not for her, and she found her first full-time design role at Live Nation Entertainment as a Senior Graphic Designer, creating marketing graphics for touring artists across the country. That job led to a role as an Art Director, where Nia was able to put her management skills to good use.

During her eight years at Live Nation, Nia really embraced her eye for detail and her innate affinity for process. She assessed and improved her team’s workflow time and time again, creating guides and templates that eradicated redundancies and opened up her team to more interesting projects. In 2018, Nia and her husband, Casey, had their first baby, a smart and curious baby boy named Arlo. Nia’s brain changed and expanded in all new ways, and when she went back to work, she found that she was working smarter and faster than ever.

In 2020, Nia rode out the global pandemic in an industry that was hit hard, collaborating with a pared down crew at Live Nation to assess the company’s creative strategy and global design guidelines. When concerts ramped back up with surprising speed a year or so later, Nia was able to put all of her guides and templates to use as she successfully onboarded dozens of freelance creatives at warp speed. The “return to Live” period was a blur, as Nia effectively oversaw all of the tour marketing creative coming out across the entire country. What followed were a number of restructures as the live music industry regained its footing, and though she survived many rounds, Nia’s role was ultimately affected by layoffs.

But wait! All this time, ever since she took her first design course, Nia had been taking on freelance design work, building a portfolio that consisted of album artwork, colorful patterns, logo designs, and more. She added more freelance clients. She and her husband welcomed their second child, the happiest baby girl named Rosemary. Nia took a class to learn how to block print alongside her aunt Grace, a gifted artist and designer and Nia’s creative mentor.

And so began the next chapter for this Renaissance gal, as she forged a new path, a patchwork quilt of creative pursuits wrapped comfortingly around her like a hero’s cape.