Kamala Harris

Kamala Harris
(Guest Blogger)

U.S. Senator from California

Washington, DC

A lifelong public safety and civil rights leader, U.S. Senator Kamala D. Harris was the first African-American and first woman to serve as Attorney General of California, and the second African-American woman to be elected to the U.S. Senate in history.

Harris began her career in the Alameda County District Attorney’s Office, where she specialized in prosecuting child sexual assault cases. In 1998, she joined the San Francisco District Attorney’s Office, where she led the Career Criminal Unit. She also served as the head of the San Francisco City Attorney’s Division on Children and Families. As California’s Attorney General, Harris prosecuted transnational gangs exploiting women and children and trafficking in guns and drugs and led comprehensive studies on the impacts of transnational criminal organizations and human trafficking in California.

Born in Oakland, California, Harris is a graduate of Howard University, America’s oldest historically black university. She received her law degree from the University of California, Hastings College of the Law. She is married to Doug Emhoff and is the author of the book Smart on Crime: A Career Prosecutor's Plan to Make Us Safer.

Make Sure You Aren’t the Last

I come from a long line of tough, trailblazing, phenomenal women. My grandmother would go into villages in India with a bullhorn, telling poor women how to access birth control. My mother came to the U.S. at the age of nineteen to study endocrinology at University of California-Berkeley and eventually became a leading breast cancer researcher. There’s no way I could have begun my political journey without strong role models like them to inspire me.

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