Tia McNair
Dr. Tia Brown McNair serves as the Vice President of Strategy and Partnerships at the Alliance for Higher Education. She leads efforts to develop and implement comprehensive strategies, policies, and partnerships at national, state, and local levels to ensure higher education is a cornerstone of a democratic and socially just society. Prior to joining the Alliance, she served as a Partner at Sova Solutions, a company that facilitates transformative change through actionable strategies, and as the Vice President in the Office of Diversity, Equity, and Student Success and Executive Director for the Truth, Racial Healing, and Transformation (TRHT) Campus Centers at the American Association of Colleges and Universities (AAC&U). In her senior leadership position at AAC&U, she oversaw both funded projects and AAC&U’s continuing programs to achieve system and institutional transformation through inclusive excellence, equity, high-impact practices (HIPs), student success, campus climate, and racial healing efforts.
She is the co-author of From Equity Talk to Equity Walk: Expanding Practitioner Knowledge for Racial Justice in Higher Education and Becoming a Student-Ready College: A New Culture of Leadership for Student Success. McNair is the editor of Strengthening Campus Communities Through the Truth, Racial Healing, and Transformation Framework published by Routledge in June 2024. In March 2025, she received the Facilitator Award at Stetson Law’s 46th Annual National Conference on Law & Higher Education. NASPA, the association of Student Affairs Administrators in Higher Education, named McNair the 2024 recipient of the Outstanding Contribution to Higher Education Award. In May 2023, McNair received an honorary degree from Franklin Pierce University for her national work to dismantle a false belief in a hierarchy of human value.
