Maya Harris boasts a significant political and legal career that parallels the achievements of her sister, Kamala Harris. As Kamala prepares to accept the Democratic nomination, Maya is set to address the Democratic National Convention in Chicago on Thursday night.
Maya Harris will be the third speaker scheduled for the 9 p.m. hour, following Illinois Representative Adam Kinzinger and preceding North Carolina Governor Roy Cooper.
Maya Harris, a lawyer and Democratic policy advisor from California, is the younger sister of Kamala Harris, born two years later. At 57 years old, she is married to Tony West, who held a senior position in the Obama campaign. Maya has one daughter, Meena, whom she raised while pursuing her education at the University of California, Berkeley, and later at Stanford Law School. Now residing between New York and California, she also has two grandchildren.
Her professional focus, according to her website, centers on advancing racial and gender justice, bolstering the U.S. economy, and enhancing democracy through the inclusion of women and people of color, especially women of color. Notably, she served as the Senior Policy Advisor for Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign.
Maya’s career is marked by numerous accomplishments. After earning her law degree from Stanford, she worked as a civil litigator and taught law as an adjunct professor at U.C. Hastings and Lincoln Law School of San Jose. She became one of the youngest law school deans in the country when she assumed the role of Dean and CEO at Lincoln Law School at just 29 years old.
Her experience also includes a role at PolicyLink focusing on policing policy, and she later became the Executive Director of the ACLU of Northern California, where she successfully argued in the landmark case League of Women Voters v. McPherson, extending voting rights to incarcerated individuals on felony probation. Additionally, she held a leadership position at the Ford Foundation, overseeing over $750 million in philanthropic investments.
Maya played a crucial role in Kamala’s 2020 primary campaign as the Campaign Chairperson and later served as a national surrogate during the Biden-Harris campaign.
Born in Champaign, Illinois, Maya spent her early years in Madison, Wisconsin. Their mother, Shyamala, was a breast cancer researcher at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, while their father was an associate professor of economics there. In her memoir, Kamala attributes the family’s move to Madison to her parents’ eventual separation.