Over the weekend, Kamala Harris made history the moment she became the first woman, and the first black and Asian American, to be Vice-President elect.

In a video Harris posted to her Twitter account, she shared the news with President-elect, Joe Biden.

Here are 5 things you need to know about Kamala Harris

  1. Harris was born and raised in Oakland, California to immigrant parents; Shyamala Gopalan, a cancer researcher from India, and Donald Harris, an economist from Jamaica. As a child, Harris grew up wanting to be a lawyer. “They were the heroes growing up. They were the architects of the civil rights movement. I thought that that was the way you do good things and serve and achieve justice. It was pretty simple,” said Harris.
  2. Harris attended Howard University after which she went to law school at the University of California, Hastings College of the Law, graduated in 1989 and was admitted to the California Bar in 1990.
  3. Harris started out her career as a deputy district attorney in Alameda County, California in 1990 and, in 1998, was recruited as an assistant district attorney in San Francisco. In 2000, she worked for the city attorney at San Francisco City Hall and, a few years later, successfully ran for District Attorney.
  4. Kamala Harris served as Attorney General of California from 2011 to 2017, becoming the first woman, first African American and first Asian American to serve as California’s attorney general.
  5. In 2015, Harris announced that she would run for Senate in California and won 60% of the vote in the November 2016 election.

The Vice-President elect’s motto comes from her mom: “You may be the first, but make sure you’re not the last.”

Image Credit: Getty Images

Kamala Harris will take office as the Vice-President of The United States of the America on 20 January 2021.

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Feature image: New York Times

Dominique Heusdens