Nikki Haley was born in South Carolina. Her parents lived in India and moved to the United States before Nikki was born. Her dad and mom came from Amritsar in Punjab, India. While her parents lived there, her father worked as a professor at one of the universities there and her mother got her degree in law at another university in India.
Nikki and her family lived in Canada for some time and she and her family are an Indian American Sikh family. Her father got his PhD from the University of British Columbia and her mother taught at a local college before starting a clothing company. The clothing company is called Exotica International and Nikki worked in it for several years.