You’ve met Vice President Kamala Harris’ husband, Doug Emhoff, and even heard stories of Harris’ Indian mother and Jamaican father, but how much do you know about Maya Harris, the vice president’s only sister?
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In a interview with the Washington Post, Kamala said she and her sister share an “unbreakable bond.” With only two years separating the duo, it’s no shocker the sisters are so close, having grown up in the same household.
So here’s everything you need to know about Maya.
It seems the Harris women were destined to become lawyers. Maya followed her big sister’s path by deciding to also study law. Unlike Kamala, Maya chose to stay in their home state of California to attend Stanford University for her undergraduate degree, according to PEOPLE. Maya would go on to earn her law degree from UC Berkeley.
Maya once worked as a civil litigator but then became an adjunct law professor and Dean of Lincoln Law School of San Jose, “making her one of the nation’s youngest law school deans at age 29,” according to her website.
While in her senior year of high school, Maya gave birth to Meena, her first and only daughter, per E! News. Maya often speaks about having to take a young Meena to her law class with her, and Maya even credits her daughter with first introducing her to her husband.
Maya met her husband, Tony West, while the pair were both in law school. West was a U.S. Assistant Attorney General under the Obama administration, and now, he acts as the chief legal officer for Uber, according to USA Today.
The 57-year-old is no stranger to politics. Both of the Harris sisters get their zest for politics from their parents who met in the 1960s as protesters, according to Politico. In fact, Maya has worked for not one but two presidential campaigns: Hilary Clinton’s in 2016 and President Joe Biden’s in 2020.
It might warm your heart to know that Maya shares her sister’s hearty laugh, a trait which Kamala says comes from their late mother. In a resurfaced clip from a 2017 interview with the sisters, their infectious laugh radiated throughout the room when Kamala jokingly called herself “big sister general.”
In the same clip, it seems Maya might have predicted her own sister’s political success, saying “when she’s president of the United States, I will call her ‘Ms. President,’ but until then, you’re just Kamala.”
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