With the world abuzz about the top contenders for the coveted POTUS seat, former president Donald Trump and current vice president Kamala Harris are closing in on one another. A tight competition like no other, especially with the premise of the 2016 and 2020 elections, is something on the radar of every major global economy. If Harris wins, it is not just her who gets elevated as a worldwide political icon. Meet the younger Harris, Maya, who is more influential than you think.
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Maya Harris, three years younger than her presidential sibling, has been a key figure in public policy and politics for the past two decades. A lawyer and public speaker, Maya Harris has served as a senior policy advisor to two US presidential candidates—Clinton in 2016 and Harris in 2020—both, sadly, unsuccessful.
She was also Hillary Clinton’s go-to person when it came to the development of the 2016 Democratic Party platform, and was the campaign chairperson for Kamala Harris during her 2020 presidential primaries. She also contributed to the New York Times bestseller, The Covenant with Black America.
Maya Harris, born to an Indian mother and Jamaican father, focuses her work on people of colour, especially African Americans and their fight against unjust incarceration through policy change. She graduated from the University of California at Berkeley, got her law degree from Stanford Law School, and went on to practice as a civil litigator. Years later, she has had the ears of two of the most politically influential women in the US. Maya Harris was also a regular guest on MSNBC as a political and legal analyst.
She, in her paper “Women of Color: A Growing Force in the American Electorate, “called out politicians for treating women of colour like just another racial or ethnic group instead of the silently growing voting bloc. Even then, she made it a point to say that if anyone ever deserves the vote of women of colour, they should feel that “their interests are priorities on the policy agenda” of the candidate.
Given that her sister is now a top contender for the coveted White House, it remains to be seen what Maya Harris’s role would be if her sister could indeed manage to keep the Trump wave at bay.