Who are Kamala Harris’ parents, and how did they inspire the 2024 presidential hopeful? Jamaican-born Donald J. Harris and Indian Shyamala Gopalan met at UC Berkeley, then had prominent careers

Jul 24, 2024

Vice-president and 2024 presidential candidate Kamala Harris’ parents are Shyamala Gopalan and Donald Harris. Photo: AFP; @BeschlossDC/X

President Joe Biden dropped out of the 2024 elections race, and now Kamala Harris could become the first female president of the US – before this, she made history as the first Black, South Asian veep

Her parents – both immigrants to the US – broke boundaries, too: Gopalan was pioneer in breast cancer research while Donald served as a professor at Stanford University

Just this week, current US Vice-President Kamala Harris emerged as the Democratic candidate in the upcoming presidential elections. Within days of the news that current US President Joe Biden would bow out of the race, Kamala gained the endorsement of multiple high ranking Democrats, including former House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi, former president and first lady Bill and Hillary Clinton, and congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

Before her nomination though, she made history as the first Black and first South Asian person to serve as veep. So just who are her parents who helped her get here?

Kamala Harris marked Mother’s Day in 2023 with this throwback photo of her as a child with her mother, Shyamala Gopalan. Photo: @Kamala Harris/Facebook

In 1962, Jamaican-born Donald J. Harris and Shyamala Gopalan, who hails from India, met as students at the University of California, Berkeley, and quickly fell in love. Both had arrived as immigrants and went on to forge groundbreaking careers and become leaders in their respective fields. Fast forward to more than 60 years later and the firstborn daughter of these two high-achieving intellectuals may just become the first female president of the United States.

Current Vice-President Kamala Harris addresses the Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority national convention on July 10, in Dallas, Texas. Photo: TNS

In just a few weeks, all eyes will be on the city of Chicago as it hosts the Democratic National Convention in August. The focus will be squarely on Kamala as she campaigns for the party’s official nomination as its candidate in the upcoming US elections, ready to take the fight to Republican ex-president Donald Trump.

Here’s what you need to know about the two people who shaped Kamala Harris into who she is today.

Kamala Harris’ parents both left home for an American education

In May 2023, Vice-President Kamala Harris spoke out about women’s reproductive care on Instagram in the caption of this photo of her and her mother, Shyamala Gopalan, who was a breast cancer researcher. Photo: @kamalaharris/Instagram

According to The New York Times, Gopalan had ambitions of becoming a biochemist and curing cancer. But as a woman in a recently postcolonial India, she was limited to studying “home sciences” at the British-founded Lady Irwin College. When her brother told her that women could apply for biochemistry degrees in the US, she came up with a plan to pursue her dreams. Despite having never left India before, she applied to UC Berkeley. When she received her acceptance letter, her surprised father, a civil servant, agreed to dig into his retirement savings to pay for her first year’s tuition, per People.

On the other side of the world, Donald made the decision to work towards a doctorate with the help of a prestigious scholarship, per the same publication. Most recipients of this scholarship studied in Britain, since the grant was administered by the British colonial government. But having had his fill of British culture, Donald was drawn to the more diverse and complex US. He was particularly interested in studying at UC Berkeley because he’d seen a news story about students from the campus going to the American South to campaign for civil rights.