Kamala Harris' life and career in pictures, as she sets out to become the first woman in the White House
Harris's story starts with her parents, Donald J. Harris, an immigrant from Jamaica, and Shyamala Gopalan Harris, who moved to the USA from India.
Pictured is her mother (left) with her friend, Lenore Pomerance, during a civil rights protest in Berkeley, California.
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Kamala Harris was born on October 20, 1964 in Oakland, California.
In the introduction to her 2019 memoir, "The Truths We Hold," Harris noted that her name is pronounced "'comma-la,' like the punctuation mark" and that it means "lotus flower," in homage to an important symbol in Indian culture.
Donald Harris holds his daughter, Kamala in 1965.
He immigrated to the United States from Jamaica to study economics at the University of California at Berkeley.
He is now a professor emeritus of economics at Stanford.
In 2021, he was honoured with the Order of Merit, Jamaica's third-highest honour, for "his outstanding contributions to national development."
This shot, taken in 1970 shows Kamala (left) with her sister, Maya, and mother, Shyamala, outside their apartment in Berkeley, California, after her parents' separation.
Harris wrote that her parents "met and fell in love at Berkeley while participating in the civil rights movement," but the couple later divorced.
The sisters celebrate Christmas in 1968.
Maya went on to become a lawyer and political advisor.
Harris credits her mother for "shaping us into the women we would become" and for teaching her daughters to be proud of both their Indian and Black heritage.
Harris as a child at her mother's lab in Berkeley, California.
Kamala's mother was a cancer scientist before her death from the disease in 2009.
Harris (right) in 1982 with Gwen Whitfield at an anti-apartheid protest during her freshman year at Howard University in Washington.
In 1982, Harris enrolled at Howard University, a historically Black university in the heart of Washington, DC.
There, she joined Alpha Kappa Alpha, the country's oldest Black sorority, and earned a bachelor's degree in political science and economics.
After college, Harris returned to California and attended law school at the University of California, Hastings.
When she decided to pursue a career as a prosecutor in the district attorney's office, Harris said she knew she would have to defend her choice to her friends and family.
Harris spent three decades as a prosecutor, serving as a deputy district attorney for Oakland's Alameda County before she was elected in 2004 to be district attorney of San Francisco (pictured).
Kamala Harris with her mother, Shyamala, at a Chinese New Year parade, in 2007.
In 2014, Harris married Doug Emhoff, a former managing partner at a law firm.
The couple met on a blind date and Harris later joked in her memoir that her staffers referred "to that era as A.D. – 'After Doug.'"
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