Nina Chaubal

Nina Chaubal was born in 1992 in Mumbai, India. At age 13, she identified as transgender after discovering the term online, finding community and connection despite limited local resources. In 2009, she immigrated to the United States on a student visa to attend the University of Illinois Champaign-Urbana, seeking independence from her unsupportive family in Mumbai. Her early career included internships as a quality assurance software engineer at Riverbed Technology in 2011 and Google in 2012. She also worked as a programmer at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications at the University of Illinois in 2012. In 2013, Chaubal officially came out as transgender. She secured an H1B visa to work as a software engineer at Google, a position she held from January 2013 through April 2015.

In 2014, Nina Chaubal co-founded Trans Lifeline, a 501(c)(3) organization, with her then-partner Greta Martela. This initiative established the first transgender suicide hotline in the United States and Canada, driven by their personal experiences with suicidal ideation. Chaubal transitioned to Director of Operations at Trans Lifeline in April 2015, dedicating her full attention to the organization. During this period, she participated in significant events such as overseeing a Trans Lifeline booth at the National Conference on LGBT Equality in February 2015 and appearing as a subject in Miley Cyrus’s Happy Hippie Presents #InstaPride Portraits Campaign in June 2015. She also spoke at the MTV Video Music Awards in August 2015 as a representative of the Happy Hippie Foundation. In November 2015, Chaubal guided the launch of Trans Lifeline’s Canadian operations. She appeared on KGNU 88.5 FM in February 2016 to discuss the need for trans crisis support and served on a panel at the American Association of Suicidology Conference in April 2016.

In December 2016, Chaubal faced detention by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in Arizona due to an expired work visa. Her community mobilized, raising funds for her bond and contacting ICE officials, leading to her release in January 2017. Her detention drew national attention from publications like The New York Times and Illinois’s Chicagoist. In January 2018, an internal audit at Trans Lifeline led to the dismissal of Chaubal and Martela from their roles after unauthorized financial transactions were discovered. She subsequently worked as a software engineer for Hustle and Even.com. In 2019, Chaubal was featured in “Where Is My Refuge?”, the first episode of the documentary series “America in Transition,” which focuses on transgender people of color. The same year, she began organizing an intentional living community and small business incubator in the Mojave Desert.