Niyah Lockett

Niyah Lockett is from Aberdeen, Mississippi – a small town in Northeast Mississippi. Students in Aberdeen lack the educational and financial resources available to students of different demographics one town over.

Her junior and senior year of high school, Niyah attended The Mississippi School for Mathematics and
Science – an opportunity most of her classmates were not aware of. MSMS served as Niyah’s opportunity
to propel herself forward, and it is there that she truly began to understand just how different her
classmates’ educational experiences could be. Niyah credits her getting into Harvard to MSMS; she also
credits her passion for civil rights and racial justice to the lived experience MSMS afforded her.

At Harvard, Niyah studied Government and African American Studies to learn the nuances of the
socioeconomic inequality her hometown faces and how these issues are intertwined. During her
freshman year, Niyah joined Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Incorporated and gained a breadth of
leadership and community service experience. Within the Lambda Upsilon Chapter, Niyah served in
various roles including Vice President and Treasurer. At the international level, Niyah joined the 45th
Cohort of Leadership Fellows. Niyah also served as a Research Partner at the Radcliffe Institute under
Dr. Eddie Cole – researching the impact of Black intellectuals on the higher education system we know
today. During her junior and senior years, Niyah worked around a university-wide moratorium on student organizations to form the Youth Council of the Cambridge Branch NAACP. Through this work, she hoped to bring social justice to her college campus and the greater Cambridge community.

During undergrad, Niyah gained a passion for civil rights law and decided that Georgetown Law was the
path toward her goal of serving others. At Georgetown, Niyah hopes to continue learning about civil rights law and racial justice and has the ultimate goal of working in impact litigation to set precedent that
positively impacts communities like hers.