But it was her time at Howard University, one of the nation's preeminent historically black colleges and universities, which she has described as among the most formative experiences of her life. Lita Rosario-Richardson met Kamala Harris while at Howard in the s when students would gather in the Yard area of the campus to hang out and discuss politics, fashion and gossip.
They bonded over an aptitude for energetic debate with campus Republicans, their experience growing up with single mothers, even just both being the Libra star sign. It was a formative era politically too. She returned to address students at Howard in and took them on a journey from the Ferguson race protests of to the halls of Capitol Hill in just one sentence:. From the streets of Ferguson to the halls of the United States Congress, you have lived the words of James Baldwin, 'There is never a time in the future in which we will work out our salvation.
The challenge is in the moment, the time is always now. But Ms Harris also operates with ease in predominantly white communities. Her early years included a brief period in Canada. Ms Harris says she's always been comfortable with her identity and simply describes herself as an "American". She told the Washington Post in , that politicians should not have to fit into compartments because of their colour or background.
I'm good with it. You might need to figure it out, but I'm fine with it," she said. In , Senator Harris married lawyer Doug Emhoff - now a fixture at her campaign stops - and became stepmother to his two children.
Last year she wrote an article for Elle magazine about the experience of becoming a stepmother and unveiled the name that would then come to dominate many headlines that followed. Instead they came up with the name 'Momala'. They were portrayed as the epitome of modern American "blended" family, an image the media took to and one that occupied many column inches about how we talk about female politicians.
On becoming vice-president-elect, she is unlikely to lose this nickname but many argue she should also be seen and recognised as the descendant of another kind of family and that is the inheritor of generations of black female activists.
Black women are seen as a political force of nature in democratic politics and the Democratic party," Nadia Brown, associate professor of political science and African American studies at Purdue University, told the BBC.
It is shared with countless black women who made this day possible. But from the very earliest, as her friend Ms Rosario-Richardson attests, she showed the skills that allowed her to be one of few women to break through barriers.
Wit and humour is part of that armoury. The laugh she greeted the president-elect with, when making that first momentous phone call, was one her friend recognised immediately and intimately. The ability to deliver zingers to her opponents in live debate was very much part of the momentum behind the start of her bid for the Democratic presidential nomination.
A simple burn on social media, but a popular shorthand for the kind of skills that meant a career in law and politics was a natural fit. Although her career as a prosecutor is what made her a politician, it brought with it political benefits and risks. She began work in the Alameda County District Attorney's Office and became the district attorney - the top prosecutor - for San Francisco in , before being elected the first woman and the first black person to serve as California's attorney general, the top lawyer and law enforcement official in America's most populous state.
She gained a reputation as one of the Democratic party's rising stars, using this momentum to propel her election as California's junior US senator in But straddling the line between pleasing left-leaning California Democrats and being a politician for a nation where the left does not decide who gets to be president has been hard. She gained favour among progressives for her acerbic questioning of then-Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh, but as a presidential candidate for the Democratic Party her adept debate performances were not enough to compensate for poorly articulated policies.
Walking the fine line between the progressive and moderate wings of her party, she ended up appealing to neither. Despite leftward leanings on issues like gay marriage and the death penalty, she faced repeated attacks for not really being progressive enough.
But those same law enforcement credentials proved beneficial on the national stage when Democrats needed to win over more moderate voters and independents. She was "someone with a law enforcement background, and perceived in her own state as being insufficiently progressive As the US grapples with an ongoing racial reckoning and there is scrutiny over police brutality, Ms Harris has taken a front row seat, using her sizable microphone.
On talk shows she calls for changes to police practices across the US, on Twitter she calls for the arrests of the police officers who killed Breonna Taylor, a year-old African-American woman from Kentucky, and she speaks frequently about the need to dismantle systemic racism. She has the law enforcement background but she has often said that her identity makes her uniquely suited to represent those on the margins.
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