Source: Detroit Free Press
#PowerWomen is part of an ongoing column for the WiB blog where we learn more about some of the World's most powerful women and how they are changing the world.
As the United States Presidential Inauguration was held at the end of January, Kamala Harris is officially the first woman, first Black American, and first Asian American to hold the position as vice president. Vice President Harris has achieved "an unprecedented trifecta of firsts", written brilliantly by Forbes.
Harris's story starts with her Indian mother and Jamaican father who immigrated to the United States at a young age. "I am the daughter of a mother who arrived in the United States at the age of 19 and believed that she and her children could do anything," Harris said on The Daily Show on Oct. 29 when asked to define what drove her to a career in politics. To put it simply, she was always taught to take action in what she believed in.
Hence, when she saw the injustice in the justice system as she was growing up, she set her eyes on becoming a lawyer to try and fix it. Harris graduated from Howard University in 1986 with a degree in political science and economics, then attended law school at the University of California, Hastings College of the Law through its Legal Education Opportunity Program (LEOP).
After completing her studies, Harris went the public service route. "I decided to go in the system to change it from the inside," she said on The Daily Show of accepting her first deputy D.A. position in 1990 and trying cases involving charges of drunk driving, sex crimes, assault, and homicide.
“Vice President Harris has already been the ‘first’ many times in her career,” says Michelle Obama. “This is a woman who knows what she’s doing. It can’t be about trying to please everybody or prove to certain people you’re good enough for the job. And the vice president wouldn’t be where she is today if she let that kind of thing get to her.”
And fight she did. Before being elected as senator in 2016, Kamala Harris served as the first woman District Attorney in San Francisco's history, and as the first African American woman and South Asian American woman in California to hold the office in 2004-2010. She has emerged victorious in many hard-fought battles, such as the $20 billion relief settlement for homeowners affected by the foreclosure crisis, and the criminal justice reform where the California Department of Justice becomes the first statewide agency to adopt a body camera program for police officers.
Even though she fell short of the presidency in the nomination of Democratic candidates in December 2019, her presidential journey did not end there. Her progressive plans to improve healthcare and reform the criminal justice system, three decades in public service, and a willingness to challenge did not go unnoticed by Biden.
"He decided that I would be a partner for him," Harris stated in her Vogue Cover interview. She sees herself as someone who "will always speak the truth, always give him my opinion, which will be based on fact and knowledge and life experience, and do it in a way that allows him, when he makes a decision, to make it with full information about the impact—and he has asked me to do that."
The rest is history - California Senator Kamala Harris and former Vice President Joe Biden earned over 80 million votes—more than any other presidential candidate. And on January 20, Joe Biden was officially sworn in as the 46th President of the United States, with Kamala Harris becoming the 49th Vice President of the United States.
With the presidential term just started, we will definitely hear more from Harris as she navigates her role as vice president. And we can't wait to see how many "firsts" she is going to achieve.
Are there any other #PowerWomen you want us to cover in future articles? Let us know in the comments!
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