Amit Paley

Amit is an entrepreneur, business executive, advocate, and former journalist living in New York City.

He was previously the Chief Executive Officer and Executive Director of The Trevor Project, the world’s largest mental health organization for LGBTQ young people. He began as a counselor on The Trevor Project's 24/7 TrevorLifeline in 2011, and since then he has answered hundreds of calls from LGBTQ youth in crisis. Under Amit’s leadership, the organization dramatically expanded the number of LGBTQ youth that it serves and the breadth of programming that it offers. During his tenure, The Trevor Project built and launched a new, integrated crisis services platform and expanded its chat and text services to 24/7. The organization also transformed its TrevorSpace platform into the largest safe-space social networking site for LGBTQ youth and expanded the Trevor Project’s research initiatives and operated the largest grassroots campaign in the world to end conversion therapy.

Before Amit became the CEO of The Trevor Project, he was an Associate Partner at the global consulting firm McKinsey & Company, where he served numerous nonprofit organizations, Fortune 500 companies, and governments. He served as a leader of McKinsey’s LGBTQ group and spearheaded the firm’s global efforts on inclusion for transgender and nonbinary people. Prior to joining McKinsey, Amit was a reporter at The Washington Post. He covered numerous beats, including as a foreign correspondent based in the paper’s Baghdad bureau, where his work was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize.

He is a graduate of Harvard College, Columbia Journalism School, and Columbia Business School.