Prior to co-founding Elevar, she was the initial Managing Director of the Dignity Fund, a privately capitalized investment fund, where she managed fund structuring and operations and completed local currency debt financing for fifteen high-growth microfinance institutions in Asia, Latin America, Africa and Eastern Europe. Maya grew up in Asia, has long been active in international investing and is passionate about bottom up solutions to development challenges: "I believe that billions of the world's poor still lack access to fundamental services, not because providing services to the poor is commercially unviable, but because our generation and the generations before us have not applied their imagination and will to innovate to create market based solutions for the base of the pyramid." Maya views her role at Elevar as helping to catalyze the very innovation that will bring essential services to the poor: "A large part of what we do involves democratizing the delivery of necessary goods to those who need them most." She also lectures at conferences, graduate schools and colleges throughout the US to inspire others to dedicate their talents to making a better life within reach of the base of the pyramid.

Before engaging in microfinance investing in 2005, Maya was a Vice President of Warburg Pincus (WP), a leading, global private equity firm, working in WP's New York, Hong Kong and Menlo Park offices. She invested in a variety of companies (IT/business services, consumer packaged goods, food production and manufacturing) spanning venture capital to leveraged buyouts to post-Asian-crisis balance sheet restructurings. She also previously worked as an investment banker at Morgan Stanley (Hong Kong and Singapore) and James D. Wolfensohn, Incorporated.

Maya is a Director of Aarusha Homes, GloboKasNet and Caja Rural Los Andes and serves as an advisor to MicroCredit Enterprises and Opportunity Fund/SVMN. She has served as Director, advisor or observer on several boards, including Dignity Fund, International Association of Microfinance Investors, Silicon Valley Microfinance Network, Comat Technologies, North Pole Ltd., Eagle Family Foods, printChannel, GT Nexus and RFM, Philippines. Maya graduated magna cum laude in Social Studies from Harvard University and has an MBA from Harvard Business School.