Kamala Devi Harris is a politician, lawyer and author who has notched up several firsts to her name. Born on 20 October, 1964 in Oakland, California to an Indian mother and Jamaican father, she was elected the first African-Asian female district attorney of San Francisco in 2003. She went on to become the first African-Asian female Attorney General of California in 2010. In 2017 she became the first African-Asian senator in U.S. history.
On January 20, 2021 she became the first female vice president of the U.S.A. as well as the highest ranking female official in U.S. history.
Harris graduated from Howard University and Hastings College of the Law. Her mother, Shyamala Gopalan was an Indian biomedical scientist who was a pioneer in her own field. Her father Donald J Harris is a Jamaican-American economist and professor emeritus from Stanford University.
During her years in high school, Kamala encountered an incident that would influence her choice of profession. She learned that her best friend was being abused by a family member. A concerned Kamala informed her mother who offered to shelter her friend for the period of her study. Thus began Kamala’s tryst with child abuse cases and fighting for human rights – causes that Kamala has remained passionate about throughout her career.
Kamala has also authored three books, one of which is for children. They are: “Smart on Crime: A Career Prosecutor’s Plan to Make Us Safer”, “The Truths We Hold: An American Journey” and “Superheroes Are Everywhere”.
Time magazine named Harris as one the 100 most influential people in the world in 2013. She was also named ‘Time Person of the Year’ in 2020.
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