Topic: Kamala Harris

Kamala Devi Harris (born October 20, 1964) is an American attorney. She is the 32nd and current Attorney General of California following the 2010 California state elections. Harris has worked as an author and a politician and has served as District Attorney of San Francisco since 2004. First elected in 2003, defeating incumbent district attorney Terence Hallinan, she was re-elected in 2007. Harris is the first female, African-American, and Asian-American attorney general in California and the first Indian-American attorney general in the United States.

Harris was born in Oakland, California. She is the daughter of a Tamil Indian mother, Dr. Shyamala Gopalan – a breast cancer specialist who immigrated to the United States from Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India in 1960 – and a Jamaican American father, Stanford University economics professor Donald Harris. She has one younger sister, Maya Harris. While the Harris sisters grew up in a household that blended Hindu and Baptist teachings, she is currently a practicing Baptist.

Harris attended Howard University in Washington, D.C., where she was initiated into Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority, and received her Juris Doctor (JD) from University of California, Hastings College of the Law in 1989.