She grew up in Los Angeles, the daughter of a minister, and turned professional at 18 after being identified as a sprinting talent in high school. She did not attend college. Her development from a teenager with extraordinary raw speed into the most complete sprinter of her generation was built across years of competition at the highest international level, and the relay events became as central to her legacy as the individual ones — she was part of American relay teams that won gold at multiple Games and set world records. The premature birth of her daughter Camryn in 2018, delivered by emergency C-section at 32 weeks due to preeclampsia, became a public turning point: she connected her experience to the maternal mortality crisis facing Black women in the United States and testified before Congress on the issue. Ten months after Camryn's birth she competed at the Tokyo Olympics and won gold.

She married Kenneth Ferguson and has spoken about the role her faith and her family provided through the difficult period surrounding Camryn's birth. She founded Saysh, a consumer shoe brand, in 2021, the same year she competed at Tokyo, and continued building it after her retirement from track in 2022. The congressional testimony, the company, and the five Olympic cycles are all part of the same career, running in parallel across the better part of two decades.