Harris, a 56-year-old former senator, was born in Oakland, California. Her father immigrated to the United States from Jamaica to study economics and her mother came from India to eventually become a breast cancer researcher.
Her parents were active in the civil rights movement and took to the streets to protest, bringing the young Kamala along in her stroller.
Her parents split when she was five years old and she and her younger sister were mostly raised by their mother, who instilled in them a sense of identity as "proud, strong black women" and also taught them to appreciate their Indian heritage, according to Harris.
After graduating from Howard University in Washington, a prestigious historically black college, and attending the University of California's Hastings College of the Law, she began her career as a prosecutor.
As the first woman elected as San Francisco's district attorney, she started a program to provide first-time drug offenders the chance to earn a high school degree and find a job.
In 2010, Harris became the first black person and first woman to be elected attorney general of the state of California, overseeing the second-largest Justice Department in the country behind only the U.S. Department of Justice.
She then became the second black woman and the first South Asian-American to be elected to the Senate in 2016. She raised her profile during Senate hearings in 2018 through her sharp questioning of a Supreme Court nominee picked by then President Donald Trump.
Harris suffered a setback when her bid for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination fell short, leading to an early exit from the race despite having drawn attention as "the female Barack Obama" after the Democrat who was the first African American president in U.S. history.
But she was selected in August as Joe Biden's running mate on the Democratic presidential ticket and became the first black woman and the first Asian American nominated for the second-highest office in the United States by a major party.
The personal connection Harris had with the Biden family seems to have helped Biden make the historic pick.
She said she first came to know Biden through his eldest son Beau, who served as attorney general of Delaware until January of 2015 and died later that year of brain cancer at the age of 46.
Harris has been sending inspiring messages to the younger generation as she ascended to the vice presidential post. In a victory speech following the November election, she said, "But while I may be the first woman in this office, I will not be the last."
She married the lawyer Douglas Emhoff in 2014. Emhoff, whom Harris met on a blind date set up by her best friend, became the country's first "second gentleman," a title referring to a male spouse of a vice president.
Harris is stepmother to Emhoff's two children, who call her "Momala" as a play on her first name. Harris' sister Maya is a lawyer.
