Kamala Harris, born in 1964 to a Jamaican father and Indian mother, spent much of her formative years in Berkeley, California.
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She has often spoken of the deep bond she shared with her mother, whom she has called her single biggest influence.
Harris won her first election in 2003 when she became San Francisco's district attorney. In that post, she created a re-entry program for low-level drug offenders and cracked down on student truancy.
She was elected California's attorney-general in 2010, the first woman and black person to hold the job, and focused on issues including the foreclosure crisis.
She declined to defend the state's Proposition 8, which banned same-sex marriage and was later overturned by the US Supreme Court.
After being elected to the Senate in 2016, she quickly gained attention for her assertive questioning of Trump administration officials during congressional hearings.
Harris launched her presidential campaign in early 2019 with the slogan "Kamala Harris For the People," a reference to her courtroom work.
She was one of the highest-profile contenders in a crowded Democratic primary and attracted 20,000 people to her first campaign rally in Oakland.
But the early promise of her campaign eventually faded. Her law enforcement background prompted scepticism from some progressives, and she struggled to land on a consistent message that resonated with voters.
Facing fundraising problems, she abruptly withdrew from the race in December 2019, two months before the first votes of the primary were cast.
One standout moment of her presidential campaign came at the expense of Biden. During a debate, she said Biden made "very hurtful" comments about his past work with segregationist senators.
"There was a little girl in California who was a part of the second class to integrate her public schools, and she was bused to school every day," she said.
"And that little girl was me."
Shaken by the attack, Biden called her comments "a mischaracterisation of my position".
The exchange resurfaced recently with a report that one of Biden's closest friends and a co-chair of his vice presidential vetting committee, former Connecticut Senator Chris Dodd, still harbours concerns about the debate and that Harris hadn't expressed regret.
The comments attributed to Dodd and first reported by Politico drew condemnation, especially from influential Democratic women who said Harris was being held to a standard that wouldn't apply to a man running for president.
Some Biden confidants said Harris' debate attack did irritate the former vice president, who had a friendly relationship with her. Harris was also close with Biden's late son, Beau, who served as Delaware attorney-general while she held the same post in California.
But Biden and Harris have since returned to a warm relationship.
"Joe has empathy, he has a proven track record of leadership and more than ever before we need a president of the United States who understands who the people are, sees them where they are, and has a genuine desire to help and knows how to fight to get us where we need to be," Harris said at an event for Biden earlier this summer.
At the same event, she bluntly assailed Trump, labelling him a "drug pusher" for his promotion of the unproven and much-questioned malaria drug hydroxychloroquine as a treatment for the coronavirus.
After Trump tweeted "when the looting starts, the shooting starts" in response to protests about the death of George Floyd, a black man in police custody, Harris said his remarks "yet again show what racism looks like".
Harris has taken a tougher stand on policing since Floyd's killing. She co-sponsored legislation in June that would ban police from using chokeholds and no-knock warrants, set a national use-of-force standard and create a national police misconduct registry, among other things. It would also reform the qualified immunity system that shields officers from liability.
The list in the legislation included practices Harris did not vocally fight to reform while leading California's Department of Justice.
And while she now wants independent investigations of police shootings, she didn't support a 2015 California bill that would have required her office to take on such cases.
"We made progress, but clearly we are not at the place yet as a country where we need to be and California is no exception," she told The Associated Press recently.
The national focus on racial injustice now, she said, shows "there's no reason that we have to continue to wait".
Australian Associated Press
