Before Kamala Harris closed out the DNC Thursday night with a rousing speech outlining her policies and rallying delegates around her bid for the presidency, the crowd heard from her sister, Maya Harris. Maya dedicated much of her speech to her and Kamala’s mother, Shyamala, who she said would be “smiling, saying how proud she is of Kamala.” She continued: “And then without missing a beat, she’d say, ‘Enough, you’ve got work to do.’” Describing Shyamala as a “trailblazer who defied the odds and defined herself,” Maya said that she and Kamala were both raised to “believe that we could be and do anything.” Suffice to say it worked — like her sister, Maya has an ambitious political résumé that includes working on Kamala’s campaigns and an impressive stint at the ACLU. If her DNC speech left you curious about her, here’s what to know.
She and Kamala grew up together.
Maya is two years younger than Kamala, and they grew up together in Northern California and Montreal. They were the only two daughters of Shyamala Gopalan, a biologist who came to Berkeley from India, and Jamaican American economist Donald J. Harris. Maya got her B.A. at UC Berkeley then headed to Stanford for a law degree, finishing in 1992, but she and Kamala have stayed close throughout their lives — she officiated her sister’s wedding to Doug in 2014. To give you a gist of their dynamic, here they are cackling through a 2012 interview where Maya refuses to call her sister “General Harris” — and also happens to casually refer to her as the future president:
She had her daughter, Meena, at 17.
Maya’s daughter, Meena, who’s since become an outspoken political and social-media figure in her own right, was born in 1984, when Maya was 17 and still living at home with her mother in Oakland. In Meena’s recollections of her early life, she often talks about Maya, Kamala, and Shyamala sharing child-rearing duties. On Thursday, standing between Kamala’s stepdaughter, Ella Emhoff, and her goddaughter Helena Hudlin, Meena said, “I grew up in Oakland, California, in a house full of extraordinary women: my mom, my grandma, and my auntie, who showed me the meaning of service — helping her sister, a 17-year-old single mom; fighting for justice for the American people; and still cooking family dinner.”
When she got to Stanford, Maya says, she brought Meena to lectures and on-campus protests while struggling to juggle motherhood with being a full-time law student. Meena has said tagging along was “formative” in giving her a “work ethic and seeing women being leaders.”
She’s an accomplished human-rights lawyer and political adviser.
After a few years of clerking and teaching law — including a stretch at a nonprofit called PolicyLink, where she advocated for police reform — Maya joined the Northern California ACLU, first helming its Racial Justice Project before quickly becoming the director of the organization’s largest affiliate in the country. One of her biggest cases there involved restoring voting rights for 100,000 Californians in county jail on probation.
After her time with the ACLU, Harris worked at the Ford Foundation for five years before becoming one of three senior policy advisers for Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign in 2015.
She’s also been involved in Kamala’s political career.
Maya and Kamala’s close relationship isn’t just personal — she’s also been by her side during a lot of key moments of her political career. (In further proof that we will never stop talking about the Kennedys, Maya has been compared to Bobby Kennedy, JFK’s brother and close confidant who’s said to have helped him win elections and make policy decisions.) Maya worked on Kamala’s campaign to be San Francisco’s district attorney and spoke at her 2004 inauguration when she won. After her time on Clinton’s 2016 campaign, she became an MSNBC analyst, only to leave the position and chair Kamala’s 2020 run.
Despite all that, Maya has not played a role in the Biden-Harris administration — according to the Washington Post, this was partially to sidestep any resemblance to Trump’s habit of appointing family members to important political positions. So far, she doesn’t seem to be officially involved in the 2024 campaign beyond her DNC speech.
She is, to the disappointment of many, married.
For some, another exciting takeaway from Maya’s DNC speech was that she looked incredible. Most of us are just dying to know her skin-care routine, but for anyone hoping to shoot their shot, Maya has been married to her Stanford Law classmate — and a former Obama assistant attorney general — Tony West since 1998. They met through Meena, who used to play hide-and-seek with West as a 4-year-old on campus, but stayed friends and didn’t start dating until a few years after graduation. West is now the chief legal officer of Uber, so I guess none of their friends have to worry about a low rating.
Something West is also, apparently, not worrying about: the fact that, following her speech, the interest of some eligible bachelors has been piqued. West responded to an X post announcing that Maya was not single and that her husband “look like he fight,” with a brief but firm message: “Appreciate you clarifying the situation. And yes, he fight.”
