Maya Harris: Who Is Kamala Harris’ Sister?
Maya Harris is the sister of Democratic vice presidential candidate Kamala Harris. During her sister’s failed presidential bid, Maya served as the campaign’s chairwoman. That wasn’t her first time working in electoral politics, as during Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign, she worked as a senior policy advisor and helped develop the New York senator’s agenda. Outside of electoral politics, she boasts an impressive and varied career, per Women’s Media Center.
Maya currently works as a political analyst for MSNBC, and is also a veteran lawyer and public policy advocate. She has previously worked for the Ford Foundation as the Vice President for Democracy, Rights and Justice while also serving as a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, Executive Director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California, and Senior Associate at PolicyLink. She has also been the dean at Lincoln Law School of San Jose and authored two publications, both focused on police policy.
Maya Was A Talented Lawyer From A Young Age
Maya was born on January 30, 1967, to Shyamala Gopalan Harris, a biologist, and Donald Harris, a Stanford University economics professor. During a childhood growing up in both the San Francisco Bay Area and Montreal, Canada, Maya and her older sister, Kamala, grew up in a unique culture and were raised in the Baptist faith of their father and Hindu faith of their mother.
In 1984, the then-17-year-old gave birth to her only child, Meena Harris. Meena would go on to graduate from Harvard Law School in 2012.
Maya attended the University of California, Berkeley, graduating with her Bachelor of Arts degree in 1989. Upon her graduation, she pursued her Juris Doctorate at Stanford Law School. While studying at Stanford, Maya began to pursue her passion for advocacy, working with the East Palo Alto Community Law Project, along with roles including Co-Coordinator of the Domestic Violence Clinic and Co-Chair of the Student Steering Committee.
She attended Stanford with Tony West, a man who she would go on to marry in 1998. While they were only friends during their time at school, the relationship began shortly after Maya’s graduation in 1992.
After graduating, Maya began her career in law as a clerk for United States District Court Judge James Ware in the Northern District of California. She would then work as a civil and criminal litigator with the San Francisco-based law firm Jackson Tufts Cole & Black, LLP. She earned the Junius W. Williams Young Lawyer of the Year Award in 1997 and was selected as one of the Top 20 Up and Coming Lawyers Under 40 by the San Francisco Daily Journal in 1998, per GlamourBiz.
She has also taught at the University of San Francisco School of Law, New College of California School of Law and Lincoln Law School of San Jose
Maya Has Been A Longtime Policy Advocate
Maya has previously worked as Senior Associate at PolicyLink, a progressive national research institute. The majority of her work with the institute focused on police reform, and she regularly set up conferences that aimed to improve police-community relations. During this period, she authored Organized for Change: The Activist’s Guide to Police Reform.
She went on to join the Northern California American Civil Liberties Union as Executive Director, continuing her reform work on a larger platform. She would direct aspects of the organization that ranged from litigation to grassroots organizing in efforts to address racial disparities in the criminal justice system and work toward the improvement of California public schools.
She also campaigned against Proposition 54, which would have ended affirmative action in California. In 2006, Maya wrote “Fostering Accountable Community-Centered Policing,” an essay that appeared in The Covenant with Black America. She joined the Ford Foundation in 2012, where she served as Vice President for Democracy, Rights and Justice, before going on to take roles with MSNBC and the campaigns of Clinton and later, her sister.
