Maya Harris facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Maya Harris
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Harris at Kamala Harris's inauguration as Attorney General in 2014
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| Born |
Maya Lakshmi Harris
January 30, 1967 |
| Education | University of California, Berkeley (BA) Stanford University (JD) |
| Political party | Democratic |
| Spouse(s) |
Tony West (m. 1998)
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| Children | Meena Harris |
| Parent(s) | Donald J. Harris Shyamala Gopalan |
| Relatives | Harris family |
Maya Lakshmi Harris (born January 30, 1967) is an American lawyer, public policy advocate, and writer. In 2015, Harris was appointed as one of three senior policy advisors to lead the policy agenda for Hillary Clinton's 2016 presidential campaign. She is the sister of Kamala Harris, the 49th and current Vice President of the United States.
As Clinton’s campaign representative to the Democratic Party Platform Committee, Harris helped draft the 2016 platform, considered the most progressive party platform in the Democratic Party’s history. She was a political and legal analyst for MSNBC from 2017 until 2018, and she served as campaign chairwoman for her sister's 2020 campaign for president until the campaign's suspension. She has been called "the next Bobby Kennedy." Harris was formerly a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress and a Visiting Scholar at Harvard Law School. From 2008 until 2013, Harris was Vice President for Democracy, Rights and Justice at the Ford Foundation. Prior to joining the Ford Foundation, she served as the Executive Director of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Northern California, the largest ACLU affiliate in the country. Before joining the ACLU, the former law school dean (Lincoln Law School of San Jose) was a Senior Associate at PolicyLink.
Early life and education
Born in Champaign-Urbana, Illinois, Harris grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area and Montreal, Quebec. She is of Jamaican and Indian heritage. As the daughter of Shyamala Gopalan Harris (1938–2009), a breast cancer researcher who emigrated from Chennai (formerly Madras), India in 1960; and Donald Harris, a Jamaican-born Stanford University economics professor, now emeritus. Her maternal grandfather, P.V. Gopalan was a career civil servant with federal Government of India. She and her older sister, Kamala, were raised with beliefs from Baptist and Hindu faiths. At the age of eight, with her sister, she persuaded the management of their apartment building to open an unused courtyard as a place for children to play. At 17, she gave birth to her only child, Meena Harris. She received her Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of California, Berkeley in 1989. That year, she enrolled in Stanford Law School. While at Stanford, she was an editor of the Stanford Law Review, and active with the East Palo Alto Community Law Project, serving as Co-Coordinator of the Domestic Violence Clinic and Co-Chair of the Student Steering Committee. She received her J.D. degree in 1992 "with distinction."
Career
Legal
After receiving her J.D. degree from Stanford Law School, Harris served as a law clerk for United States District Court Judge James Ware in the Northern District of California. In 1994 Harris joined the San Francisco law firm of Jackson Tufts Cole & Black, LLP, working in civil and criminal litigation.
Harris served as an adjunct law professor at the University of San Francisco School of Law. She also taught gender discrimination at U.C. Hastings College of the Law and contract law at New College of California School of Law and was Dean at Lincoln Law School of San Jose.
She was later appointed Dean and Chief Executive Officer of Lincoln Law School of San Jose. At 29, she was one of the youngest law school deans ever in the United States, and the only Black woman at the time.
Philanthropy
In 2008, Harris was appointed Vice President for Democracy, Rights and Justice at the Ford Foundation. The program focused on promoting effective governance, increasing democratic participation, and protecting and advancing human rights worldwide, and she led a global team in making grants of over $150 million annually.
Awards and honors
In 1997, the Young Lawyers Division of the National Bar Association honored her with the Junius W. Williams Young Lawyer of the Year Award. The following year, she was named one of the Top 20 Up and Coming Lawyers Under 40 by the San Francisco Daily Journal.
In 2006, Harris was named one of 10 notable Desis of the year. She was awarded the Women Who Dare Award from Girls, Inc. in 2008. In 2009, Harris was named to the first class of The Root 100, celebrating the “leadership, service and excellence of African-American men and women whose passion, dedication and innovative work have set them apart.” She was presented with the Champion of Justice Award from Equal Rights Advocates in 2014, an award given annually to a hero in the movement for gender equality.
Personal life
Harris has been married to Tony West since July 1998. Maya and Tony were both in the class of 1992 at Stanford Law School, where they became friends but did not start a relationship until after graduation. Her daughter Meena Harris graduated from Stanford in 2006 and from Harvard Law School in 2012. Her sister, Kamala Harris is the Vice President of the United States.
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