Maia began her career in education teaching high school biology and other science and literacy skills courses in San Francisco, California. She also served as Department Chair before moving on to work at the district level, developing and executing professional development workshops for all of the district’s middle and high school science teachers.
Maia joined the SEPUP team in 2007. Her published products include several units in middle school science series Issues and Life Science and Issues and Physical Science, and the high school course Science and Global Issues: Biology. She is currently Director of the San Francisco/Bay Area Center for the Amgen Biotech Experience, a program that provides professional development, curriculum, and materials for Bay Area teachers to teach biotechnology.
She is also project manager for the NSF-funded DRK-12 project Moving Next Generation Science Standards into Practice: A Middle School Ecology Unit and Teacher Professional Development Model, and for a grant funded by the Carnegie Corporation of New York to develop summative assessments for the middle school Next Generation Science Standards.
Additionally, she is in her ninth year of directing a series of projects to develop hands-on, informal science programs for middle and high school students in Saudi Arabia, including delivering professional development for teachers from Saudi Arabia delivered both at the Hall and in Saudi Arabia. Maia holds a bachelor’s degree in Integrative Biology from the University of California, Berkeley, and a master’s degree in Animal Sciences from the University of Hawaii, Manoa.