Kamala Harris

Kamala Devi Harris is an American politician and attorney. She served as the 49th vice president of the United States from 2021 to 2025. She served under President Joe Biden. Harris holds several historic titles in the United States. She was the first female vice president. She was also the first African American and first Asian American vice president. She is the highest-ranking female and Asian public official in U.S. history.

Harris was born on October 20, 1964, in Oakland, California. Her family had strong ties to education and science. Her mother, Shyamala Gopalan Harris, was an Iyengar biomedical scientist. She moved from India to the United States in 1958. She studied endocrinology, which is the study of hormones, at UC Berkeley. Her research on the progesterone receptor gene helped advance breast cancer research. Her father, Donald Jasper Harris, immigrated from Jamaica in 1961. He became the first Black scholar to receive tenure in the economics department at Stanford University.

Harris grew up moving between several different locations. Her parents lived in college towns like Urbana and Evanston, Illinois, and Madison, Wisconsin. After her parents divorced when she was seven, she lived in Berkeley with her mother. During the early 1970s, she often traveled to Chennai, India. There, she stayed with her maternal grandfather. She learned to speak some Tamil and wear traditional Indian clothing. Later, she lived in Montreal, Quebec, while her mother worked at McGill University.

Her education prepared her for a long career in law. She graduated from Westmount High School in 1981. She then attended Howard University, a historically black university in Washington, D.C. At Howard, she joined the Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority. She earned a degree in political science and economics in 1986. Later, she attended the University of California, Hastings College of the Law. She earned her Juris Doctor, which is a professional law degree, in 1989.

Harris began her legal career in Alameda County as a deputy district attorney. She later moved to San Francisco to work in the District Attorney's Office. In 2003, she was elected the district attorney of San Francisco. She was the first person of color to hold that position. During her time there, she focused on many different areas. She created a Hate Crimes Unit to protect LGBT youth. She also started a Reentry Division to help former prisoners return to society. This program had a recidivism rate of less than 10%. Recidivism is when a person returns to prison after being released.

In 2010, Harris was elected as the attorney general of California. She was the first woman and the first South Asian American to hold this office. She served from 2011 to 2017. During her second term, she focused heavily on consumer protection. She helped recover billions of dollars for citizens through settlements with large corporations. She also worked on privacy rights by collaborating with tech companies like Apple and Google. She wanted to ensure that mobile apps disclosed how they shared user data.

From 2017 to 2021, Harris served as a U.S. senator from California. She won her election in 2016. In the Senate, she advocated for several specific policies. These included stricter gun control laws and the DREAM Act. She also supported the federal legalization of cannabis. She became well-known for asking pointed questions during Senate hearings. One notable moment involved questioning officials from the first Trump administration. She also questioned Brett Kavanaugh during his Supreme Court nomination hearings.

In the 2020 election, Harris became the running mate for Joe Biden. They defeated the incumbents, Donald Trump and Mike Pence. As vice president, Harris presided over a U.S. Senate that was evenly split between parties. This meant her votes were very important for passing laws. She cast 33 tie-breaking votes, which is more than any other vice president. These votes helped pass the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 and the Inflation Reduction Act. In 2024, she ran for president with Tim Walz as her running mate. She lost the election to Donald Trump and JD Vance.