Kia Hayes is the Chief Equity and Inclusion Officer at CLS. As Chief Equity and Inclusion Officer, Kia contributes to and supports an inclusive organizational culture that centers racial, social, LGBTQ+ and disability equity and ensures that our external communications reflect those values. She provides strategic vision and leadership in all areas of CLS’s DEIB work, leads CLS’s DEI committee, provides support to staff-led affinity groups, and helps CLS apply an equity lens to its internal work environment as well as its advocacy for clients and communities.
Before joining CLS in 2024, Kia was a distinguished attorney focusing on criminal justice system reform at Penn Law School’s Quattrone Center for the Fair Administration of Justice. At the Quattrone Center, she provided technical assistance and training to innocence organizations and criminal conviction integrity units across the country.
Previously, Kia was an attorney at the Innocence Project New Orleans for eight years, focusing on freeing innocent people who were wrongly convicted of crimes and advocating for reforms which reduce wrongful convictions. Prior to law school, Kia spent six years as a reporter at the Times-Picayune in New Orleans and the Providence Journal.
Kia is a graduate of UCLA school of law, has a master’s degree in print journalism from the University of Maryland, and a bachelor’s in Africana Studies from Brown University.