Vice President-elect Kamala Harris is set to be the first woman vice president as well as the first Black and South Asian vice president. Her firsts as vice president-elect are not the only ceiling-breaking things she’s done. Here’s more about her and her other achievements.

Harris as a Student

“After spending her middle and high school years in Montreal, Harris attended Howard University, a historically Black institution in Washington, and then got her law degree at UC Hastings College of the Law in San Francisco,” said the Los Angeles Times. 

There, at Howard University, Harris joined the Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, which, like her school, is a historically black sorority. The institution “profoundly shaped her political vision,” said CNN. She has also mentioned it and other historically black fraternities and sororities during a couple of her speeches.

Harris as an Attorney

“As a Deputy District Attorney, she also prosecuted cases for homicide and robbery. She worked at that office from 1990 to 1998 before going on to serve in the San Francisco District Attorney’s Office,” according to California’s Department of Justice.

Then, in 1998, Harris was named managing attorney of the Career Criminal Unit of the San Francisco District Attorney’s Office. In her position as managing attorney, she prosecuted three strikes cases and serial felony offenders. She went on to serve as the head of the San Francisco City Attorney’s Division on Families and Children.

Five years later, Harris was elected as the first female District Attorney of San Francisco and as the first African American woman and South Asian American woman in California in the position. She held this office from 2003-2010.

In 2010, Harris rose even further in the political light as she became the first Black person and first woman to be California’s Attorney General, winning by 0.8 percentage points, according to Politico.

Harris as Senator

“In 2017, Kamala D. Harris was sworn in as a United States Senator for California, the second African-American woman and first South Asian-American senator in history. She [served] on the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, the Select Committee on Intelligence, the Committee on the Judiciary, and the Committee on the Budget,” says her website.

As senator, Harris has won settlements for California homeowners, helped win marriage equality, defended the Affordable Care Act, and prosecuted trafficking gangs, among other things.

As Harris climbed the political ranks, she shattered more and more barriers, with her future vice presidency to be the next.

Photo courtesy of USNEWS.COM