Kamala Harris

Kamala Harris was born on October 20, 1964, to Shyamala Gopalan Harris and Donald Harris in Oakland, California. Her parents divorced when she was 7 years old, and five years later she moved to Montreal, Canada, with her mother and sister Maya.

Kamala returned to the United States to attend Howard University in Washington, D.C., where she majored in political science and economics. She graduated in 1986 and later received her J.D. at the University of California’s Hastings College of the Law in 1989.

Kamala passed the State Bar of California in 1990 and became a deputy district attorney in Alameda County. In 2000, she was appointed chief of its Community and Neighborhood Division for the San Francisco District Attorney’s Office, where she established the state’s first Bureau of Children’s Justice. Three years later, she became San Francisco district attorney. Kamala became California attorney general in 2010, making her the first African American and the first woman to hold the position.

Kamala won the Senate seat in California in 2016, becoming the second African American woman and the first South Asian American to enter the Senate. In 2019, Kamala announced she planned to run for president in 2020. However, she dropped out of the Democratic primary in 2020. Later that year, Joe Biden announced Harris as his vice-presidential running mate. Kamala and Biden won the presidency in 2020, making her the first woman and the first woman of color to hold the position.

In July 2024, Biden ended his bid for reelection and endorsed Harris as the new democratic nominee. She was officially nominated at the Democratic National Convention the following month and later received endorsements from stars including Taylor Swift, Eminem, Billie Eilish and Bruce Springsteen.

Kamala married attorney Doug Emhoff in 2014. She is the stepmother to Emhoff’s children, Cole and Ella, from a previous marriage.