Who’s Kamala Harris?  

22.03.2022

Known as the “female Obama”, first time Senator Kamala Devi Harris has scripted history by becoming first woman, Black and Indian-American vice president of the United States.

Born in Oakland, California, to two immigrant parents – an Indian-born mother and Jamaican-born father – her parents divorced when she was five and she was primarily raised by her Hindu single mother, Shyamala Gopalan Harris, a cancer researcher and civil rights activist.

She spent her high school years living in French-speaking Canada – her mother was teaching at McGill University in Montreal. She attended college in the US, spending four years at Howard University, which she has described as among the most formative experiences of her life. After Howard, she went on to earn her law degree at the University of California, Hastings, and began her career in the Alameda County District Attorney’s Office. 

Harris rose through the ranks, becoming district attorney in 2004. In 2010 she was narrowly elected attorney general of California—winning by a margin of less than 1 percent—thus becoming the first female and the first African American to hold the post.

In 2016, she was elected as a Senator for California, becoming only the second African American woman to ever be elected to the Senate in U.S. history.

While in the Senate, Harris served on two powerful committees: The Intelligence Committee and the Judiciary Committee.

In 2014, Senator Harris married lawyer Doug Emhoff – now a fixture at her campaign stops – and became stepmother to his two children.

When Biden picked her as his running mate recognizing the crucial role Black voters could play in his determined bid to defeat Donald Trump, she was the just the third woman to be selected as the vice president on a major party ticket. Then-Alaska Governor Sarah Palin in 2008 and New York Representative Geraldine Ferraro in 1984 were the other two.