Maya Lakshmi Harris was born in Champaign-Urbana, Illinois, and grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area and Montreal, Quebec.

[4] At 17, while attending Bishop O'Dowd High School in Oakland, she gave birth as a single parent to her only child, Meena Harris.

[8] In 1994, Harris joined the San Francisco law firm of Jackson Tufts Cole & Black, LLP, working in civil and criminal litigation.

[10][11] Harris was a senior associate at PolicyLink, a national research and action institute dedicated to advancing economic and social equity.

[15] In her role as the head of the largest affiliate office of the ACLU, Harris directed and coordinated litigation, media relations, lobbying, and grassroots organizing work.

[16] In 2003, Harris was the Northern California director for No on 54, the successful campaign to defeat Proposition 54, which sought to ban state agencies from collecting racial and ethnic data.

[17] In 2006, she was the lead attorney in League of Women Voters of California v. McPherson, a case which restored voting rights to over 100,000 Californians in county jails on probation from felony convictions.

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.

[16] She was also a contributing author to The Shriver Report: A Woman's Nation Pushes Back from the Brink, publishing the essay "The Gender Wage Gap: A Civil Rights Issue for Our Time".

[36] 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.

[8][40] Her sister, Kamala Harris, was the vice president of the United States from 2021 to 2025, and unsuccessfully ran in the 2024 presidential election as the Democratic nominee.