Maya grew up in Framingham, Massachusetts, and received her B.A. from the University of Maryland, where she majored in government and politics and Arabic studies. Her internships at the International Rescue Committee and the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism inspired her interest in the intersection between political violence and humanitarian crises. After a post-grad year studying Arabic in Morocco through the Boren Scholarship, Maya began working at the Nonproliferation Policy Education Center, where she facilitated an annual fellowship program that teaches government staffers about civil and military nuclear policy. She completed her MPA summer internship with Hope for Haiti, a nonprofit focused on improving quality of life for the Haitian people. After graduating from the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs, Maya hopes to work on issues of non-state violence, human rights protection, and humanitarian response. In her free time, she enjoys pub trivia, baking, and adapting classic rock songs for the ukulele.