But Harris was also very creative. After attending Stanford University, graduating from Harvard Law School, and embarking on a brief legal career, Harris decided a traditional career path wasn’t for her.

Instead, she sought to forge her own path. Being a public servant, she figured, didn’t necessarily mean she had to become a lawyer.

The project that launched Harris’ social-justice-focused entrepreneurship began soon after the inauguration of Donald Trump, with a T-shirt that had the words “Phenomenal Woman” on it – a phrase borrowed from the Maya Angelou poem of the same name.

In many ways, the shirt was simple in its political message. But in other ways, it was quite radical. “I never thought Phenomenal Woman would turn into something big, you know?” she says.

But the shirt did become big. And after its success, Harris decided to launch an entire clothing line that highlighted social and political injustices throughout the world. Officially, on International Women’s Day in 2017, Phenomenal Woman was born.

“It was a very critical moment for me in terms of my entrepreneurial journey,” she says. “It was the first time I finally [took the leap] to go pursue my passion. And so I left my job to do it full-time for about nine months.”

Harris now works at the company full-time and has helped expand it into a cultural commentary force. Shirts for sale now include slogans such as “Phenomenal Mother”, “Phenomenally Asian”, “Phenomenally Latina”, and “Powerful Black Voter”.

The company has launched numerous campaigns and lent its support to non-profit organisations such as the Essie Justice Group, which seeks to end mass incarceration; the Black Futures Lab, which helps to build black political power; Native Voices Rising, which promotes advocacy and civic engagement in indigenous communities; as well as the TGI Justice, which seeks to end discrimination against transgender, intersex and gender-variant people.

Harris’ forthcoming children’s book, Ambitious Girl, encourages young women to celebrate and pursue their dreams. In the book, a young girl sees a woman on television who is called “too ambitious” and “too assertive”, which prompts her to learn about the challenges that generations of girls and women have faced.

And the book is launching just as Democratic vice-presidential nominee Kamala Harris’ campaign has resurfaced the nation’s racist and sexist undercurrents. If elected, Harris would be the first woman and the first woman of colour to serve as vice-president. President Donald Trump called Harris “unlikeable” and a “monster” after the vice-presidential debate.

Meena Harris says she was raised to believe she could do anything she wanted – but “ambitious” is too often a negative label, or a “dirty word”, slapped on professional woman. “I didn’t realise that until I entered the real world later in life,” she adds.

That is why she wants to disabuse young girls of that idea as early as possible, she said. Ambitious Girl is Harris’ second children’s book. Earlier this year, she published Kamala and Maya’s Big Idea, based on a true story about her aunt and her mother building a playground for other kids.

Harris says she’s raising her two daughters to take their ambitions seriously – but she isn’t “sugar-coating” anything about the racism and sexism they might encounter. “I’m preparing them for the real world,” she says.

And with Ambitious Girl, Harris is offering young women the opportunity to figure out what leadership looks like to them. Ambition, Harris says, “means many different things to different people”. For her, she says, it means “going after my dreams”.