Gopalan, a retired Indian civil servant whose progressive views on democracy and women's rights impressed her. She says she has been strongly influenced by her maternal grandfather P. As children, she and her sister visited their mother's family in Madras (now Chennai) several times. Their mother introduced them to Hinduism and took them to a nearby Hindu temple, where she occasionally sang. Ī neighbor regularly took the Harris girls to an African American church in Oakland where they sang in the children's choir, and the girls and their mother also frequently visited a nearby African American cultural center. When Harris began kindergarten, she was bused as part of Berkeley's comprehensive desegregation program to Thousand Oaks Elementary School, a public school in a more prosperous neighborhood in northern Berkeley which previously had been 95 percent white, and after the desegregation plan went into effect became 40 percent Black. They stayed briefly on Milvia Street in central Berkeley, then at a duplex on Bancroft Way in West Berkeley, an area often called the "flatlands" with a significant black population. Harris and her younger sister Maya lived in Berkeley, California, during and after her parents' studies. Harris's childhood home on Bancroft Way in Berkeley
Harris became vice president upon being inaugurated on Janualongside President Joe Biden. Joe Biden selected her as his running mate and their ticket went on to defeat the incumbent president, Donald Trump, and vice president, Mike Pence, in the 2020 election. Harris sought the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination, but withdrew from the race prior to the primaries. She gained a national profile for her pointed questioning of Trump administration officials during Senate hearings, including Trump's second Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh, who was accused of sexual assault. As a senator, she advocated for healthcare reform, federal de-scheduling of cannabis, a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants, the DREAM Act, a ban on assault weapons, and progressive tax reform. Harris defeated Loretta Sanchez in the 2016 Senate election to become the second African American woman and the first South Asian American to serve in the United States Senate. Harris served as the junior United States senator from California from 2017 to 2021. She was elected Attorney General of California in 2010 and re-elected in 2014. In 2003, she was elected district attorney of San Francisco. She began her career in the Alameda County District Attorney's Office, before being recruited to the San Francisco District Attorney's Office and later the City Attorney of San Francisco's office. A member of the Democratic Party, she previously served as the attorney general of California from 2011 to 2017 and as a United States senator representing California from 2017 to 2021.īorn in Oakland, California, Harris graduated from Howard University and the University of California, Hastings College of the Law. history, as well as the first African American and first Asian American vice president.
She is the first female vice president and the highest-ranking female official in U.S. Kamala Devi Harris ( / ˈ k ɑː m ə l ə ˈ d eɪ v i/ ( listen) KAH-mə-lə DAY-vee born October 20, 1964) is an American politician and attorney who is the 49th and current vice president of the United States.