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Kamala Harris is the 49th vice president of the United States. Harris was formerly the junior United States senator from California, and prior to her election to the Senate, she served as the 32nd attorney general of California. Her family includes several members who are notable in politics and academia.
Harris's maternal ancestry comes from Tamil Nadu, India. Her paternal ancestry comes from Saint Ann, Jamaica. She is married to American entertainment attorney and law professor Douglas Emhoff.
Douglas Emhoff is the husband of Kamala Harris. He was born to Jewish parents [1] Michael and Barbara Emhoff in Brooklyn, New York. He lived in New Jersey from 1969 to 1981, moving with his family to California when he was 17. [2] [3] [4] Emhoff graduated from the California State University, Northridge and USC Gould School of Law. [5] He married film producer Kerstin Emhoff (née Mackin) in 1992; they divorced in 2008 after 16 years and two children. [6] [4] He married Harris on August 22, 2014, in Santa Barbara, California, with Harris's sister Maya Harris officiating. [7]
Emhoff is an entertainment litigator and began his career at Pillsbury Winthrop's litigation group. He later moved to Belin Rawlings & Badal, a boutique firm, in the late 1990s. He opened his own firm with Ben Whitwell in 2000. The firm was acquired by Venable in 2006. Emhoff joined DLA Piper as a partner in 2017, working at its Washington, D.C., and California offices. [8] [9] Following the announcement that his wife would be Joe Biden's running mate in the 2020 United States presidential election, Emhoff took a leave of absence from the firm. [9] After the Biden–Harris ticket won, the campaign announced Emhoff would permanently leave DLA Piper before Inauguration Day to avoid conflict of interest concerns. [10]
Cole MacKin Emhoff is the stepson of Kamala Harris through her marriage to Doug Emhoff. [11] [12] He was born September 15, 1994, to Kerstin Emhoff and was named after jazz musician John Coltrane. [13] Emhoff graduated from Colorado College with a bachelor's degree in psychology. Emhoff was an assistant at William Morris Endeavor before becoming an executive assistant at Plan B Entertainment. Emhoff calls Harris "Momala". [14] He married Greenley Littlejohn on October 14, 2023, in a Los Angeles ceremony that was officiated by Harris. [15]
Ella Emhoff is the stepdaughter of Kamala Harris through her marriage to Doug Emhoff. She was born May 29, 1999, to Kerstin Emhoff and was named after jazz singer Ella Fitzgerald. [12] In 2014, she was in the music video for Bo Burnham's song "Repeat Stuff". In 2018, Emhoff graduated from high school in Los Angeles where she was on the swim team. [16] She is an artist majoring in apparel and textiles at Parsons School of Design. Emhoff calls Harris "Momala". [12] She designed her inauguration day dress with designer Batsheva Hay. [17] [18]
Kerstin Emhoff b. 1967 | Doug Emhoff b. 1964 | Kamala Harris b. 1964 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Cole Emhoff b. 1994 | Ella Emhoff b. 1999 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Shyamala Gopalan was the mother of Kamala Harris. Shyamala [lower-alpha 1] (December 7, 1938 – February 11, 2009) was a biomedical scientist at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, [19] whose work in isolating and characterizing the progesterone receptor gene stimulated advances in breast biology and oncology.
Donald J. Harris is the father of Kamala Harris. He is a Jamaican-American economist and professor emeritus at Stanford University, originally from Saint Ann's Bay, Jamaica. Of Jamaican descent, Harris was born on August 23, 1938, to Beryl Christie Harris (née Finegan) [20] [21] and Oscar Joseph Harris. [22] He grew up in the Orange Hill area of Saint Ann Parish, near Brown's Town. [23] [24] Harris received a Bachelor of Arts from the University College of the West Indies in 1960. In 1963 he came to the United States to earn a PhD from University of California, Berkeley which he completed in 1966. [25] He met his future wife, Shyamala Gopalan through the civil rights movement. [26] Harris was an assistant professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign from 1966 to 1967 and at Northwestern University from 1967 to 1968. He moved to the University of Wisconsin–Madison as an associate professor in 1968. In 1972, he joined the faculty of Stanford University as a professor of economics. He directed the Consortium Graduate School of Social Sciences at the University of the West Indies in 1986–1987. He was a Fulbright Scholar in Brazil in 1990 and 1991 and in Mexico in 1992. In 1998, he retired from Stanford becoming a professor emeritus. [25]
Maya Harris is the younger sister of Kamala Harris. She was born in Champaign-Urbana, Illinois and raised in the San Francisco Bay Area and Montreal. [27] She had her only child Meena Harris at the age of 17. Harris completed a Bachelor of Arts at University of California, Berkeley and earned a J.D. degree from Stanford Law School. [28] She works as a lawyer, public policy advocate, and a television commentator. [29] [30] Harris married lawyer Tony West in July 1998. [31]
Meena Harris is the niece of Kamala Harris. She was born in Oakland, California in 1984. Harris completed a bachelor's degree from Stanford University and a J.D. at Harvard Law School. [32] She is a lawyer and children's book author. She founded a campaign to raise awareness on social policy issues. [33] Her 2020 children's book is based on the life story of her mother and aunt. [34] Harris and her husband Nikolas Ajagu have two daughters. [35]
P. V. Gopalan (1911 – February 1998) was the maternal grandfather of Kamala Harris. [36] [37] Gopalan was a career civil servant, eventually serving as Joint Secretary to Government of India in the Ministry of Labour, Employment and Rehabilitation. [36] He was later deputed to the Government of Zambia and lived in Lusaka as Director of Relief Measures and Refugees, to help Zambia manage an influx of refugees from Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe). [36] Gopalan and his wife Rajam were from Tamil Nadu state and had wed in an arranged marriage. [36] They had four children. Their eldest daughter Shyamala became a scientist in the United States and Canada. Their son Balachandran received a PhD in economics and computer science from the University of Wisconsin–Madison and returned to an academic career in India. [36] [38] Their daughter Sarala is an obstetrician who practiced in the coastal city of Chennai, India. Their youngest daughter Mahalakshmi is an information scientist, who worked for the Government of Ontario. [36]
Gopalan Balachandran, the uncle of Kamala Harris, studied at St. Xavier's College Calcutta, University of Calcutta and the Imperial College London. He obtained a PhD in Economics and Computer Science from the University of Wisconsin in 1978 with dissertation devoted to Financial regulation of decentralized economies. He was a consulting fellow at the Manohar Parrikar Institute of Defence Studies and Analyses, Delhi. [39] [40] He was married to Rosamaria Orihuela Basurto in 1980. [41]
Sharada Balachandran Orihuela is the first cousin of Kamala Harris. She is an Indian Mexican born in Mexico to Rosamaria Orihuela and Gopalan Balachandran. She started formal education in New Delhi and moved frequently between India, Mexico, and the United States. [42] After moving to Oakland, California for college in 2001, Balachandran Orihuela's aunt, Shyamala Gopalan, helped her cope with race relations in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks and later influenced her intellectual trajectory. [43] Balachandran Orihuela graduated from Mills College and University of California, Davis. [42] [43] She is an associate professor of English and comparative literature at University of Maryland, College Park. [43] She authored the 2018 book, Fugitives, Smugglers, and Thieves . [43]
Christine Simmons was a family friend who Kamala Harris has referred to as an aunt. [44] She joined Alpha Kappa Alpha in 1950 while attending Howard University. [44] She was a former chapter president. [45] Simmons died in 2015. [45]
Kamala Harris is of Jamaican descent on her paternal side and of Indian descent on her maternal side. [46] [47] Donald J. Harris wrote in an account of his family ancestry that the Harris name comes from his paternal grandfather Joseph Alexander Harris, a land owner and agricultural produce exporter, and that his paternal grandmother "Miss Chrishy" (née Christiana Brown) was a descendant of both enslaved Jamaicans and Hamilton Brown, a plantation and slave owner. [48] [49] However, Snopes, a fact-checking website, rated this claim as unproven pending further research. In July of 2019, Snopes noted that Harris made errors in some of the vital dates he provided for births and deaths of his grandparents. [24] The following year, PolitiFact stopped short of Snopes' unproven rating, and again reviewed the validity of the scandal, saying about the Stanford professor emeritus' claim that he is the descendant of the slave owner, "I would be inclined to believe him." [50]
Kamala Devi Harris is an American politician and attorney who has been the 49th and current vice president of the United States since 2021, serving with President Joe Biden. She is the first female, African American, and Asian American vice president, making her the highest-ranking female official in U.S. history. Harris is the Democratic Party's nominee for president in the 2024 election. She served in the United States Senate from 2017 to 2021 as the junior senator for California, and earlier as the attorney general of California.
Maya Lakshmi Harris is an American lawyer, public policy advocate, and writer. Harris was one of three senior policy advisors for Hillary Clinton's 2016 presidential campaign's policy agenda and she also served as chair of the 2020 presidential campaign of her sister, Kamala Harris.
The second lady of the United States or second gentleman is the informal title held by the spouse of the vice president of the United States, concurrent with the vice president's term of office. Coined in contrast to "first lady" – albeit used less commonly – the title "second lady" was apparently first used by Jennie Tuttle Hobart to refer to herself. The first second gentleman of the United States is Doug Emhoff, the husband of Kamala Harris, the current vice president and first woman in the position, since January 20, 2021.
Douglas Craig Emhoff is an American lawyer who is the second gentleman of the United States. He is married to Kamala Harris, the 49th vice president of the United States. As the first husband of a vice president, Emhoff is the first Second Gentleman of the United States. He is also the first Jewish spouse of an American president or vice president. Harris is the Democratic Party's nominee for the 2024 US presidential election. If she wins, Emhoff will become the first First Gentleman of the United States.
The 2020 presidential campaign of Kamala Harris, a United States senator from California from January 2017 to 2021, officially began on January 21, 2019, with an announcement on Good Morning America. Harris had widely been considered a "high profile" candidate for the 2020 Democratic Party presidential primaries since 2016.
Shyamala Gopalan was a biomedical scientist at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, whose work in isolating and characterizing the progesterone receptor gene has stimulated advances in breast biology and oncology. She is the mother of Kamala Harris and Maya Harris, a lawyer and political commentator.
Painganadu Venkataraman Gopalan was an Indian career civil servant who served with the Government of Zambia and the Government of India.
MeenakshiAshley Harris is an American lawyer, author, and theater producer. In theatre production, Harris won a Tony Award for producing A Strange Loop and was also nominated for producing Suffs. Harris's first children's picture book, Kamala and Maya's Big Idea (2020), was released by HarperCollins' imprint Balzer + Bray; it was based on the story of her mother, Maya Harris, and aunt, Kamala Harris, the 49th vice president of the United States.
Donald Jasper Harris, is a Jamaican-American economist and emeritus professor at Stanford University, known for applying post-Keynesian ideas to development economics. He was the first Black scholar granted tenure in the Stanford Department of Economics, and he is the father of Kamala Harris, the incumbent Vice President of the United States and 2024 Democratic presidential nominee, and of Maya Harris, a lawyer, advocate and writer.
Kerstin Emhoff is an American film producer and the co-founder and CEO of the commercial production company Prettybird and creative studio Ventureland. She is a member of the Directors Guild of America, Producers Guild of America, and Television Academy.
#KHive is the hashtag used by an informal online community supporting Kamala Harris, the 49th vice president of the United States and 2024 Democratic presidential nominee. The hashtag is also a term that is always pronounced and occasionally transcribed as K-Hive, and refers to the wider online community that is not formally affiliated with her campaign or office. The community formed prior to and during her 2020 presidential campaign as an effort to defend Harris from perceived misinformation and attacks perceived as racist and sexist. The movement has been cited as an example of social media fandom or stan culture.
Ella Rose Emhoff is an American artist and fashion designer. As the daughter of U.S. Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff and stepdaughter of Vice President Kamala Harris, she is a member of the Second Family of the United States.
Julie Chávez Rodriguez is an American political rights activist and the campaign manager for Vice President Kamala Harris's 2024 presidential campaign, transitioning to that role from President Joe Biden's 2024 re-election campaign.
The Truths We Hold: An American Journey is a memoir by Kamala Harris. The book was first published by Penguin Books on January 8, 2019. A young readers edition was published by Philomel Books on May 7, 2019.
Fugitives, Smugglers, and Thieves: Piracy and Personhood in American Literature is the debut book by Mexican academic Sharada Balachandran Orihuela. It was published by University of North Carolina Press in 2018. It explores piracy and illegal trade in American literature as a form of self-representation by colonial subjects facing abjection due to exclusionary citizenship and property laws.
The Rainbow Sign was an African-American cultural center in Berkeley, California, that operated from 1971 to 1977. Vice President of the United States Kamala Harris frequently attended the center as a child, and described it as influential on her.
The Afro-American Association (AAA) was an influential organization founded in 1962 that started as a study group teaching African and African American history, later hosting speakers, meetings, forums, and other activities. Historian Donna Murch has described it as “the most foundational institution in the Black Power movement.”
"We did it, Joe!" is a viral video in which Kamala Harris, moments after learning she and Joe Biden had won the 2020 United States presidential election, calls Biden to congratulate him on their victory. The quote "We did it, Joe!" became a meme, and Harris's tweet publishing the video became one of the most-liked posts ever on Twitter.
This article covers the life of Kamala Harris before her tenure as Attorney General of California. Kamala Devi Harris was born in Oakland, California, 1964 to biologist Shyamala Gopalan and economist Donald J. Harris. The Harris family moved to various locations in the Midwestern United States from 1966 to 1970, when she moved back to California. At the age of twelve, she moved to Montreal, Quebec, where she attended school through her first year of college. She then attended Howard University and the University of California College of the Law, San Francisco.
Gopalan eventually left Canada and returned to California to continue her work on the role of hormone receptors in breast-cancer development at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley, California). She was awarded several NIH grants supporting her research through 2001, and her lab published their findings in 2006 (Cancer Res 66:10391–10398, 2006; DOI:10.1158/0008-5472.CAN-06-0321). (Photo caption: Shyamala Gopalan Harris (left) in her lab at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.)
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