Maya Wiley
American lawyer

Maya D. Wiley (born January 2, 1964) is an American lawyer, professor, and civil rights activist. She has served as president and CEO of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights since May 2022. Wiley served as counsel to New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio. She chaired the Civilian Complaint Review Board (CCRB) from 2016 to 2017. She was an MSNBC legal analyst from August 2018 to January 2021. Wiley ran in the 2021 New York City Democratic mayoral primary, placing third.
Wiley is the senior vice president for social justice at The New School and a professor at the Milano School of Policy, Management, and Environment.
Early life and education
Wiley was born on January 2, 1964, in Syracuse, New York, and raised in Washington, D.C. Her father was a Black civil rights leader, chemist and academic George Wiley. Her mother, Wretha Frances (Whittle) Wiley, was White, and inspired her to focus on progressive issues. On August 8, 1973, Wiley's 42-year-old father fell overboard while sailing with Wiley and her older brother on his 23‐foot boat on Chesapeake Bay, Maryland.
“Maya Wiley” enters the record as american lawyer. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Maya, Wiley and American can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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“Maya Wiley” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Maya, Wiley and American provides the most credible route into that argument.
Chronology provides the most reliable spine for this subject; interpretation should follow only after identities and dates are secure. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 26, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q24963314. VIAF identifies the subject as 8161816142927720668. The Library of Congress control number is no2021039853. 2 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1964, 2022, 2016 and 2017.
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This entry incorporates text from “Maya Wiley” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.