If you've been studying soon-to-be Vice President (opens in new tab) Kamala Harris, you probably already know about her sister and former presidential campaign chair Maya Harris (opens in new tab). A lawyer, civil rights activist, and author, Maya Harris may not always agree with her sister on issues surrounding criminal justice, but the two are fiercely supportive of each other. Says Maya, "If people got to know Kamala as a person, what she really believes and where her heart lies, I think it would be hard not to come to the conclusion that this is the person most passionate about what we've been fighting for so long." So who is the friend who was a close associate of Kamala's and even officiated her wedding to Douglas Emhoff (opens in new tab)?

If you're already familiar with Maya, it may be because she was a senior advisor to Hillary Clinton in the 2016 election. Hillary really trusted her instincts," Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta told Talking Points Memo (opens in new tab)." Maya will cut through the bullshit, explain it to her quickly, and give her something to think about."

But I must note that she has done more than that: she is a leader of the American Civil Liberties Union, vice president of the Ford Foundation, and editor of The New Jim Crow by her friend Michelle Alexander. She also served as vice president of the Ford Foundation and was one of the youngest law school deans in the nation at Lincoln Law School in San Jose; she was a political analyst for MSNBC, which she quit to work with Kamala (open in new tab) on the campaign (though Kamala who gives her advice on (she refuses to speak specifically about). She is sometimes referred to as Kamala's "Bobby Kennedy" (open in new tab).

She served as campaign chair until Camara withdrew from the campaign on December 3, 2019." I think most people who know Maya would say she is one of the smartest people they know," Camara told Politico (open in new tab) in June 2019 about her sister's campaign." I feel very blessed that she volunteered for this campaign at such a high level and that she is who she always is - she works around the clock and is probably one of the hardest, if not the hardest working people in the campaign."

She is also a writer. Recently, she wrote honestly about her experience with lupus (opens in new tab) and said she was forced to speak out during the pandemic:

She also just wrote a children's book, Ambitious Girl, which will be released at the same time as the Harris and Biden inauguration . She told People about the book: "First and foremost, I hope that girls will take away from it a sense that female ambition is a good thing, a positive thing, something to be celebrated, something to be claimed, something to find strength in! "

And she has also authored publications on the criminal justice system. In an essay for Tavis Smiley's book, The Covenant with Black America (opens in new tab), Maya says: "If the most effective government affirmative action program is the preferential treatment that people of color receive when entering the criminal justice system rather than college When the most effective government affirmative action program is the preferential treatment that people of color receive when they enter the criminal justice system rather than the university system, something is clearly wrong.

Maya has been married for over 20 years to Tony West, former Deputy Attorney General of the Senate and now Chief Legal Officer of Uber. They met on the first day of classes at Stanford Law School, when Meena introduced her mother to her new hide-and-seek partner, West; the two kept in touch, but did not tie the knot until years after graduation.

"We waited for the most inconvenient time to actually get together, he was in D.C. and I was in the Bay Area," Maya (opens in new tab) told the Stanford attorney (opens in new tab). The family joke is that "Meena knew long before we got together that we should be together. "

He is also an adorably supportive partner to her and her sister-in-law:

Their daughter Meena is an adult and has two children:

She became pregnant with Meena in 1984, during her senior year of high school; in 2014 on MSNBC, Maya went to school and raised her children alone recalled the struggles of raising a child alone while going to school. She said (opens in new tab): "I'm a teenage single parent, I don't have access to daycare, and I wouldn't have been able to do what I've done so far without the structure of paying for both college and law school tuition."

She also said, "I'm not a single parent.

At the 2020 DNC, Kamala said: "My mother instilled in my sister Maya and me the values we portray. She taught us to put family first. It is the family you were born into and the family you choose to be a part of."

On Mother's Day this year, Kamala spoke about her late mother, Shamala Gopalan (opens in new tab), who passed away in 2009:

It is clear that their love for her was one of the most important parts of their lives.

What we do know about their father, Donald Harris (opens in new tab), is that, aside from some oddly critical comments about Kamala, he never talks to the press about their relationship, and neither Kamala nor Maya seem to talk much about their relationship.