[4] Vaino graduated from Tallinn Pedagogical University with a bachelor's degree in Estonian philology, and she defended her dissertation cum laude in Estonian literary and cultural studies at Tallinn University in 2011; her dissertation title was Irratsionaalsuse poeetika A. H. Tammsaare loomingus (The Poetics of Irrationalism in the Work of A. H. Tammsaare, supervised by Rein Veidemann).

Since 2015, Vaino has contributed as a columnist for the newspaper Postimees and as one of the authors of the daily commentaries on Vikerraadio.

From 2016 to 2020, she hosted the cultural program Vasar (Hammer) on Vikerraadio (until the end of 2018 with Peeter Helme), and from the fall of 2020 to March 2024 she was one of the hosts of the program Loetud ja kiristeet.

[10] In 2019, Vaino was elected a Tallinn University Alumnus of the Century [et].

[4][15] Vaino has two children, and her partner is the literary scholar Toomas Haug [et].