Kamala Harris

Vice President Kamala Harris made history on Inauguration Day 2021 when she became the first woman and woman of color in American history to hold the office.

Harris is the daughter of an Indian mother and Jamaican father and is the second Black woman and first South Asian American senator in history.  Before she was appointed by President Joe Biden to be his running mate, she represented the state of California as a U.S. Senator starting in 2016, where she also served on the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, the Select Committee on Intelligence, the Committee on the Judiciary, and the Committee on the Budget.

Harris began her career in criminal prosecution as Deputy District Attorney in Alameda County, working for San Francisco's City Attorney Louise Renne as the chief of the Community and Neighborhood Division, where she specialized in prosecuting child sexual assault cases.  She later became the first Black woman to be elected District Attorney of San Francisco and served from 2004 to 2010.  She served as the attorney general of California from 2011 to 2017, becoming the first woman, first Black and South Asian American to serve as California's Attorney General.  She refers to herself as a "progressive prosecutor."

"I was raised that, when you see a problem, you don't complain about it, you go and do something about it," Harris said in an interview with Good Morning America.

Read more about her life, career, and political record.