Profile: Kamala Harris

Joe Biden’s VP pick Kamala Harris rose to prominence in the 2019 race for the Democratic presidential nomination when she was the lone Black women vying for the candidacy. But Harris made headlines much earlier – good and bad – as the first Black female district attorney for San Francisco and later attorney general of California. Her heritage is also much more complex. She is the daughter of immigrant parents, who pursued careers in academia in the U.S. Her father was from Jamaica and taught economics at Stanford and her mother, from Chennai in India, became a cancer researcher.

This made Harris the first Indian-American and the first Caribbean-American elected to the Senate as well as the first Black female Senator from California. Firsts are nothing new for Harris, but she would of course also be the first female and the first black vice president as well as the first vice president with Indian heritage in American history.

As a district attorney, Harris spearheaded a program helping first-time drug offenders, according to the Biden Harris campaign website. As California’s attorney general though, Harris was often criticized for the lack of criminal justice reform taking place under her watch.

Harris currently serves on the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee as well as the Senate Judiciary Committee.

As vice-presidential candidate, Harris faces off against vice president Pence this evening in a live televised debate in Utah.