In her career, Maya Harris has majorly focused on policy and civil rights.
US Vice President Kamala Harris has accepted the Democratic Party nomination for the US Presidential elections. On the fourth and final night of the Democratic National Convention (DNC) in Chicago, her sister Maya Harris addressed the attendees and spoke at length about her relationship with the US Vice-President and their late mother, Shyamala Gopalan Harris.
Noting their mother would be proud to see Kamala Harris as the Democratic Party nominee, Maya said that she raised them to “believe that we could be and do anything, and we believed her”.
“She knew that we could be the authors of our own story,” she said, adding that her elder sister has been “fighting for each of us to have that freedom.”
Who is Maya Harris?
Maya, the younger sister of the US vice president, has remained a major part of her life and professional career over the decades.
When Kamala and Maya’s parents — Donald Harris and Shyamala Gopalan — parted ways, the two sisters decided to live with their mother. At the time, they were just 12 and nine years old.
Also Read: All About Kamala Harris’ Mother, Who Grew Up In India And Moved To US
Maya later attended the Stanford Law School before working as a civil litigator. Then she became an adjunct law professor and Dean of Lincoln Law School of San Jose.
In her career, Maya has majorly focused on policy and civil rights, besides racial and gender justice. She was also a visiting scholar at Harvard Law School and a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress.
She was also the vice president of democracy, rights and justice at the Ford Foundation and executive director of the ACLU of Northern California.
Involvement in presidential campaigns
In 2020, Maya was the campaign chairperson during Kamala Harris’ first presidential campaign.
Before that, she even worked as the senior policy advisor to Hillary Clinton during her presidential run in 2016. At the time, she used to lead the group of policy experts, besides developing Clinton’s domestic policy.
Family
Maya welcomed her only child, daughter Meena, when she was a teenager.
Interestingly when Meena was just four, she played a matchmaker and introduced her mother to Tony West, who later became her husband.
In an interview with Stanford Lawyer in 2010, she said that Meena played a game of hide-and-seek with West on the campus of the university while they were just students. The two started dating after graduation.
Maya has two granddaughters — Amara and Leela — and often posts photographs with them on social media.