Madeleine Kanai was born to a white American mother and a mixed race Japanese father in Kobe, Japan and raised in Kobe and Lexington, Kentucky. Kanai received a B.A. in international studies from DePaul University in Chicago, Illinois and an M.A. in globalization from the University of Sussex in Falmer, England. She worked in communications and marketing in the retail industry, as well as for the Loving Day Project, an organization dedicated to fighting racial prejudice through education.