Kamala Harris: A woman of many firsts

US Vice President-elect Kamala Harris is a woman of firsts — the first female, first black, and first South Asian person to be elected an inch away from the US presidency.

She was also the first Indian American to serve as a US senator as well as the second African American woman senator. Harris was elected to the US Senate as a Democrat in 2016 and began her first term representing California in that body the following year.

Harris was previously the state’s attorney general (2011–17). In November 2020 she was elected vice president of the United States on a ticket with Joe Biden.

Just over a year ago though, she had been hoping to win the Democratic nomination for presidency. But by the end of the year, her campaign was dead and it was Biden who returned the 56-year-old to the national spotlight by putting her on his ticket.

Who is Kamala Harris?

On Saturday, Harris paid tribute to the women, particularly black women, whose shoulders she stands on as she shatters barriers that have kept mostly white men entrenched at the highest levels of American politics for more than two centuries.

“Tonight, I reflect on their struggle, their determination and the strength of their vision to see what can be unburdened by what has been,” Harris said.

President-elect Joe Biden had the character and audacity “to break one of the most substantial barriers that exists in our country, and select a woman as his vice president,” she added.

“While I may be the first woman in this office, I will not be the last,” Harris said in her first post-election address to the nation.

Kamala has spent her life fighting injustice, a passion that was first inspired by her mother Shyamala, an Indian-American immigrant, activist, and breast cancer researcher.

Growing up in Oakland, Kamala had a stroller-eye view of the Civil Rights movement. Through the example of leaders like Thurgood Marshall, Constance Baker Motley, and Charles Hamilton Houston, Kamala learned the kind of character it requires to stand up to the powerful, and resolved to spend her life advocating for those who could not defend themselves. 

After earning an undergraduate degree from Howard University and a law degree from the University of California, Hastings, she began her career in the Alameda County District Attorney's Office.

In 2003, Kamala became the District Attorney of the City and County of San Francisco. Among her achievements as district attorney, Harris started a program that gives first-time drug offenders the chance to earn a high school diploma and find employment.

Having completed two terms as the District Attorney of San Francisco, Kamala was elected as the first African-American and first woman to serve as California's Attorney General. In this role, she worked tirelessly to hold corporations accountable and protect the state’s most vulnerable people.

Over the course of her nearly two terms in office, Kamala won a $25-billion settlement for California homeowners hit by the foreclosure crisis, defended California’s landmark climate change law, protected the Affordable Care Act, helped win marriage equality for all Californians, and prosecuted transnational gangs that trafficked in guns, drugs, and human beings.

In the United States Senate, Kamala’s mission remained unchanged: fighting for the rights of all communities in California. Since taking office, she introduced and cosponsored legislation to raise wages for working people, reform the criminal justice system, make healthcare a right for all Americans, address the epidemic of substance abuse, support veterans and military families, and expand access to childcare for working parents.

On talk shows, she called for changes to police practices across the US, on Twitter, she called for the arrests of the police officers who killed Breonna Taylor, a 26-year-old African-American woman from Kentucky, and she spoke frequently about the need to dismantle systemic racism.

She has the law enforcement background but in addition to that, she has often said that her identity makes her uniquely suited to represent those on the margins.

Now she has the chance to do just that and from inside the White House.