Nia Vestal

Sponsor Club: RC of Libby, MT
Occupation: High School English and
Spanish Teacher

Hailing from a small Wisconsin town, Nia learned to appreciate the simple aspects of

life. She attended Cornell College, a liberal arts school located in an Iowa farming

community where she pursued a degree in Anthropology and Sociology. These

content areas influenced her to explore education outside the rural school setting. For

an extended period, she studied in Guatemala and Ecuador.


After college, her path for adventure continued and she permanently moved to

Chicago to work as a Community and Education Organizer. After two years in

Chicago, she yearned for “something” different. This yearning brought her west of the

Mississippi into unexplored territory. Initially she planned on traveling to California

for a job, but stopped in Montana and stayed.

In Montana, she gained her first experiences teaching at-risk youth with Aspen Youth

Alternatives. Wanting to stay in Montana and enjoy the seasonal life style, she

worked trails with the Montana Conservation Corps; this experience served as a

springboard for a teaching career.

The stop in Montana also led to her best friend: her husband, Matt. Matt and Nia have

led trail crews for AmeriCorps programs in Montana, Vermont and Washington. With

two dogs in tow, they returned to Montana in 2001 and decided to stay indefinitely.

While teaching high school in Harrison, Montana, Nia returned to Montana State

University to get her Master’s Degree in Education, Instruction and Curriculum

Design.

Nia and Matt migrated to Montana’s most northern point: Troy. Here, they bought a

home and together work on gardening and building sizeable calf muscles hiking the

steep terrain of the Yaak and Cabinet Mountains.