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_-_01_(cropped).jpg) Kamala Harris with her husband and step children in 2024 | |
| Current region | Los Angeles, California, U.S. |
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Kamala Harris is an American politician and attorney who was the 49thvice president of the United States from 2021 to 2025. Harris was formerly thejuniorUnited States senator fromCalifornia, and prior toher election to the Senate, she served as the 32ndattorney general of California. Her family includes several members who are notable in politics and academia. They were the second family of the United States from 2021 to 2025 duringHarris' vice presidency underJoe Biden. Harris's maternal ancestry comes fromTamil Nadu, India. Her paternal ancestry comes fromSaint Ann, Jamaica. She is married to American entertainment attorney and law professorDouglas Emhoff.
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Douglas Emhoff is the husband of Kamala Harris. He was born to Jewish parents[1] Michael and Barbara Emhoff inBrooklyn,New York. He lived inNew Jersey from 1969 to 1981, moving with his family to California when he was 17.[2][3][4] Emhoff graduated from theCalifornia State University, Northridge andUSC Gould School of Law.[5] He married film producerKerstin Emhoff (née Mackin) in 1992; they divorced in 2008 after 16 years and two children.[6][4] He married Harris on August 22, 2014, inSanta Barbara, California, with Harris's sisterMaya Harris officiating.[7]
Emhoff is an entertainment litigator and began his career atPillsbury 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 byVenable in 2006. Emhoff joinedDLA Piper as a partner in 2017, working at itsWashington, D.C., andCalifornia offices.[8][9] Following the announcement that his wife would be Joe Biden's running mate in the2020 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 beforeInauguration Day to avoidconflict of interest concerns.[10]
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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 musicianJohn Coltrane.[13] Emhoff graduated fromColorado College with a bachelor's degree in psychology. Emhoff was an assistant atWilliam Morris Endeavor before becoming anexecutive assistant atPlan 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 singerElla Fitzgerald.[12] In 2014, she was in the music video forBo 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 artistmajoring in apparel and textiles atParsons School of Design. Emhoff calls Harris "Momala".[12] She designed herinauguration day dress with designerBatsheva 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[a] (December 7, 1938 – February 11, 2009) was abiomedical scientist at theLawrence Berkeley National Laboratory,[19] whose work in isolating and characterizing theprogesterone receptor gene stimulated advances in breast biology andoncology.
Donald J. Harris is the father of Kamala Harris. He is a Jamaican-American economist and professor emeritus at Stanford University, originally fromSaint Ann's Bay, Jamaica. Of Jamaican descent, Harris was born on August 23, 1938, to Beryl Harris (née Finegan)[20][21] and Oscar Joseph Harris.[22] He grew up in the Orange Hill area ofSaint Ann Parish, nearBrown's Town.[23][24] Harris received a Bachelor of Arts from theUniversity College of the West Indies in 1960. In 1963 he came to the United States to earn a PhD fromUniversity 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 theUniversity of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign from 1966 to 1967 and atNorthwestern University from 1967 to 1968. He moved to theUniversity of Wisconsin–Madison as an associate professor in 1968. In 1972, he joined the faculty ofStanford University as a professor of economics. He directed the Consortium Graduate School of Social Sciences at theUniversity of the West Indies in 1986–1987. He was aFulbright Scholar in Brazil in 1990 and 1991 and in Mexico in 1992. In 1998, he retired from Stanford becoming aprofessor emeritus.[25]
Maya Harris is the younger sister of Kamala Harris. She was born inChampaign-Urbana, Illinois and raised in the San Francisco Bay Area and Montreal.[27] She had her only childMeena Harris at the age of 17. Harris completed a Bachelor of Arts atUniversity of California, Berkeley and earned aJ.D. degree fromStanford Law School.[28] She works as a lawyer, public policy advocate, and a television commentator.[29][30] Harris married lawyerTony West in July 1998.[31]
Meena Harris is the niece of Kamala Harris. She was born inOakland, California in 1984. Harris completed a bachelor's degree fromStanford University and a J.D. atHarvard 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 asJoint Secretary to Government of India in theMinistry of Labour, Employment and Rehabilitation.[36] He was later deputed to the Government ofZambia and lived inLusaka as Director of Relief Measures and Refugees, to help Zambia manage an influx of refugees from Southern Rhodesia (nowZimbabwe).[36] Gopalan and his wife Rajam were fromTamil Nadu state and had wed in anarranged 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 theUniversity 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 theGovernment 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 anIndian Mexican born in Mexico to Rosamaria Orihuela and Gopalan Balachandran. She started formal education inNew Delhi and moved frequently between India, Mexico, and the United States.[42] After moving toOakland, California for college in 2001, Balachandran Orihuela's aunt, Shyamala Gopalan, helped her cope withrace relations in the aftermath of theSeptember 11 attacks and later influenced her intellectual trajectory.[43] Balachandran Orihuela graduated fromMills College andUniversity of California, Davis.[42][43] She is an associate professor of English and comparative literature atUniversity 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 joinedAlpha Kappa Alpha in 1950 while attendingHoward 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 ofIndian descent on her maternal side.[46][47]
Donald J. Harris wrote in an account of his family ancestry thatthe 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 andHamilton Brown, a plantation and slave owner.[48][49] However,Snopes, afact-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's unproven rating, and again reviewed the validity of the story, saying about the Stanford professor emeritus's claim that he is the descendant of the slave owner, "I would be inclined to believe him."[50]
Harris' maternalancestral home is the village ofThulasendrapuram in India, in which her grandfatherP. V. Gopalan was born.[51][52] The Gopalans belonged to the conservativeTamil Brahmin community, a part of India's historicallyeliteBrahminvarna.[53]
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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