Maya Nair grew up in Trivandrum, India with her parents and three sisters. After graduating from Women's College, she joined the Trivandrum Engineering College. As a 1979 graduate and gold medallist in Electronics and Telecommunications Engineering, she was offered a job in the Bombay Suburban Electric Supply in SEEPZ, Mumbai. 

Maya and her husband moved to Texas in 1982 and later, in 1985, to Atlanta. They have two children, Nisha, who is a student at Georgia Tech and Nitya, who is a senior at Milton High School in Alpharetta. 

After the children were born, Maya went back to school and earned a Master's degree from Georgia Tech. She has been working in software for over 26 years.