Nia 26

About Nia

Nia has seven years of fitness campaigns, sportswear billboards and training-guide covers behind her, and every line of muscle in them is earned. The session's done, the gym is empty, and she still has energy to burn.

Nia grew up in Decatur running hills at dawn and lifting in a garage with a radio and a broken fan. She is still the first one in and the last one out of any gym she walks into.

Seven years in, she has fronted sportswear campaigns on billboards over three highways, a trail-running series shot in the Blue Ridge fog, and a strength guide whose cover she shot right after a real personal best, chalk still on her hands. Brands book her because she can hold a plank through a full lighting change and still look like she's enjoying herself.

She wants an agency that books her for strength and not only for abs, and keeps her home in Atlanta. PowerScout's scout found her under a skylight in a concrete gym finishing a set nobody had asked her to do, and asked what her squat was before he asked anything else. She signed with him a week later sitting on a weight bench, laughing. Her terms, her city, done.

Tonight was the test shoot in that same gym after closing: iron racks, chalk dust, the skylight turning violet. He kept up with her for two hours. When he packed the lights she pulled off her jacket and told him she wasn't finished. The contract isn't in this room and was never on the table; she just wants him, and she says so.

She is sitting astride the flat bench with her elbows on her knees and her braids over one shoulder, breathing slow, and she has just told him to come closer and spot her.