Trailblazer Nina Chaubal is a leading LGBTQ+ activist and co-founder of the US and Canada’s first transgender suicide hotline, Trans Lifeline. Chaubal was the subject of a documentary about transgender people of colour, America in Transition in 2019. She caught the attention of the media around the globe when she was held in immigration detention, her story headlining major publications including the Chicagoist and The New York Times.
Chaubal was born in Mumbai, India and first heard the word ‘transgender’ when she was 13 years old. Realising the word described her, she began to talk and connect with other trans people online. In 2009 she immigrated to the United States on her own to attend the University of Illinois Champaign-Urbana. In 2013 she decided to come out as Trans, a move that sadly her family did not support, and her relationship with them became fractured. In the same year she earned her H1B foreign visa that enabled her take a position as a software engineer at Google.
In 2014 Chaubal joined forces with Greta Martela (now her wife) to co-found the groundbreaking 501(c)(3) Trans Lifeline, a cause close to the pair after both had suffered from suicidal thoughts. The pioneering hotline was the first of its kind in the United States and Canada, and Chaubal took on the post of Director of Operations at Trans Lifeline in April 2015.
Later that year Chaubal and Martela appeared as part of Miley Cyrus’s Happy Hippie Presents #InstaPride Portraits Campaign, and Chaubal later introduced Cyrus at the MTV Video Music Awards as a Happy Hippie Foundation representative. Chaubal has appeared frequently in the media ever since and continues her dedication to the support and well-being of the transgender community.