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"We sometimes joke that our modern family is almost a little too functional!” So said Kamala Harris back in 2019, when she was in the running to make history as the first female Vice President of the United States, and her family had been thrust into the limelight for the first time.
In the five years since, that scrutiny has only intensified, and no more since Harris became the Democratic presidential nominee earlier this year. Harris’s family were formally introduced to the American public at the Democratic National Convention in August, when both her stepchildren, her husband, her sister and her niece NAMES all took to the stage to support her.
What struck many was how distinctly the Harris family set-up represents modern America: they are mixed race, interfaith and blended from multiple marriages, they are a picture of the progressive vision of America that Harris’s presidential campaign represents to many.
"The world’s greatest step-mother", was Harris’ stepdaughter Ella’s description of Harris during the 2020 DNC. "You’re a rock, not just for our dad, but for three generations of our big, blended family."
That blended family includes Harris’s husband Doug, the country’s first second gentleman and the first Jewish person to hold the role, her two stepchildren Cole and Ella Emhoff who famously call her ‘Momala’, and their mother Kerstin, with whom Harris shares a close friendship, and who has supported her campaign. There’s also Harris’s younger sister Maya, and niece Meena — both are lawyers by trade — have also been close by her side during her historic campaign.
“We might not look like other families in the White House,” her stepson, Cole Emhoff, told the convention crowd last month. “But we are ready to represent all families in America.”
Here is a comprehensive guide to what could become the new first family of the United States.
Doug Emoff: her husband and ultimate cheerleader
Kamala Harris’s presidential nomination has already been marked by a series of firsts. Alongside her achievements in becoming the first African-American and South Asian-American woman to get the gig, her husband Doug Emhoff is already America’s first ever second gentleman, and could bump that up to becoming the country’s first-ever first gentleman if his wife is elected POTUS next week.
Emhoff, a former entertainment lawyer from Brooklyn with two adult children, Cole and Ella Emhoff, isn’t just Harris’s biggest supporter (the photo of them hugging after her 2020 victory, with Harris still in her running gear, is one of her career's most iconic images). He's also nearly as popular as she is, boasting over a million Twitter followers and his own hashtag: #DougHive.
Emhoff and Harris’s love story began in 2013, a tale which went viral after Emhoff recounted it at the DNC in August. The pair were set up on a blind date by one of Harris’s close friends, PR consultant Chrisette Hudlin, and he left her an awkward voicemail message the next morning.
“For generations, people have debated when to call the person you’re being set up with. And never in history has anyone suggested 8:30 am,” Emhoff joked. “And yet, that’s when I dialled. I got Kamala’s voicemail, and I just started rambling. ‘Hey, it’s Doug. I’m on my way to an early meeting. Again, it’s Doug’.
“I remember I was trying to grab the words out of the air and put them back in my mouth. And [after] what seemed like far too many minutes, I hung up.” Harris still has the message has on her phone because she found it “endearing” — they still play it on every anniversary.
“It sounds corny, I know, but the conversation just flowed,” Harris wrote in her memoir, saying she called him back that day and they spoke for an hour.
Before becoming second gentleman, Emhoff brought home an annual salary of more than $1 million as a partner at a law firm, making his and Harris’s net worth an estimated $5.8 million (£4.4 million).
Advocating for abortion access and becoming a leading voice in the White House’s efforts to combat antisemitism have been among the career highlights of his four years as second gentleman so far.
‘First daughter of Bushwick’: Kamala’s fashion It Girl step-daughter Ella Emhoff
In 2021, as President Biden was sworn into office, there was an unexpected star of the show. Ella Emhoff, Harris’s stepdaughter, was then just 21 and set the internet alight when she emerged glimmering among a sea of bland ecru coats and suit jackets in a moiré dress by cult brand Batsheva, with a jewel-dripped tweed Miu Miu coat over the top.
At the time, Vogue wrote that Emhoff's inauguration outfit "perfectly married her signature Brooklyn quirk with the solemnity of the occasion" and that Emhoff "wouldn't be hewing to any outdated notions of what a White House-adjacent young woman should dress like.”
Suddenly, Emhoff had caught the attention of the world’s most influential taste-makers and fashion magazines. After the inauguration, her Instagram following increased from 50,000 followers to over 300,000 in the space of a few days. Just over a week later, and she was signed to IMG models, the prestigious modelling agency which also represents the likes of Heidi Klum and Gigi Hadid.
But it is perhaps her casual look that has earned her the most notoriety. Emhoff’s alternative style has seen her nicknamed “the First Daughter of Bushwick” (a famously artsy New York neighbourhood).
In May 2021, Emhoff made her Met Gala debut, walking the famed carpet in a jaw-dropping Adidas by Stella McCartney red diamond mesh bodysuit with matching trousers, walking hand in hand with actor Julia Garner. A few months later, she became the face of the Adidas by Stella McCartney campaign. "I feel that Stella McCartney represents the future of fashion," Emhoff told Vogue of the collaboration.
Harper's Bazaar named Emhoff one of their "icons" of the year for her impact on the world through her ideas and her art.
Cole Emhoff: music aficionado stepson
Compared to Ella, Cole is the more private of Harris’s stepchildren. Enjoying a life mostly out of the limelight with his wife, the world was first formally introduced to him when he took to the stage at the DNC, narrating a short film about his dad.
After graduating with a bachelor of arts in psychology, Cole previously worked for talent agency William Morris Endeavor, and then as an executive assistant at Plan B Entertainment, Brad Pitt's production company.
Cole has spoken of his sweet relationship with Harris in the past, saying of meeting her for the first time: "I was kind of in my own world, just about to graduate, go to college. And then I met her and we had this amazing dinner. And I realised like, Oh, my God, Doug has met someone who is completely unique and totally special."
He continued: "I think for all of us, it was love at first sight. We had an incredible evening at one of my favourite restaurants—The Reel Inn. We had a long drive down the Pacific Coast Highway, sharing music. I got to know her first on a much more personal level — her music tastes, her cooking, how she interacts with Doug, which was hilarious. She would just be ribbing him. It was perfect."
"Cole and Ella could not have been more welcoming," Harris wrote of her first time meeting Doug's children. "They’d been wanting to meet me, too. We talked for a few minutes, then piled into Doug’s car for dinner together. It was about an hour away in traffic, which gave us some quality car time to get to know one another. Cole, it turned out, was a music aficionado, and he was excited to share some of his latest discoveries with me."
She recalls Cole told her, "I just started listening to Roy Ayers. Do you know him?" Harris replied by singing back “everybody loves the sunshine, sunshine, folks get down in the sunshine....” To which Cole replied, "You know it!"
Cole married his wife Greenley Littlejohn in 2023. Harris officiated the wedding which took place in Los Angeles. "I want for those two [Cole and Greenley] to have a loving marriage where they are best friends and they know that it’s not just them against the world, that our family supports them. That the community of people that came together at the wedding supports [them]," Harris said.
Although it’s not clear where he works now, he posts on Instagram under @coleemhoff, and his page is mainly pictures of him and Littlejohn.
Kerstin Emhoff – a co-parenting utopia, in spite of an affair
Emhoff and Harris have been married since 2014, but before they met he was in a previous marriage with Kerstin Emhoff for nearly two decades. The pair met in 1992, and welcomed their two children, Ella and Cole, together before their divorce was finalised in 2010.
Doug has been open about how his marriage with Kerstin ended after he had an extra-marital affair with a teacher at his children’s school. “During my first marriage, Kerstin and I went through some tough times on account of my actions,” Emhoff said in a statement with CNN in August 2024. "I took responsibility, and in the years since, we worked through things as a family and have come out stronger on the other side.”
"Doug and I decided to end our marriage for a variety of reasons, many years ago,” Kerstin said in her own statement to CNN. "He is a great father to our kids, continues to be a great friend to me and I am really proud of the warm and supportive blended family Doug, Kamala, and I have built together.”
Emhoff met Harris in 2013 when she was the attorney general of California, and the couple were married a year later. When Kerstin found out Doug was dating Harris, she has shared that she was excited for him, telling Marie Claire in 2020 "I just thought, 'Wow, that's cool. Don't mess this up!'”.
What has surprised many about the Harris-Emhoff set-up is the friendship that has blossomed between Harris and Kerstin. “For over 10 years, Kamala has been a co-parent with Doug and me,” Kerstin has said in the past, describing Harris as “loving, nurturing, fiercely protective, and always present”.
As the co-founder of the production company Prettybird, Kerstin has often worked alongside her ex-husband and even lent her creative skills to support Harris’s campaign. Kerstin has commented on people’s surprise at her decision to help, saying, “They were like, ‘The ex-wife wants to do what?’ But it’s always been about family and working together.”
Kerstin was one of many members of Harris’s family to appear the DNC earlier in the year, attending the first two days and resharing a post on X pointing out that “Kamala’s husband’s ex-wife is supporting her more enthusiastically than Trump’s current wife is supporting him”. “Damn right,” she wrote.
The three have clearly formed a bond, even going to exercise classes together. "When she was [California attorney general] and senator, I'd meet them at the SoulCycle by their house, and we'd take a class together," Kerstin told Politico.
In a 2019 essay for Elle, Harris wrote about how she and Kerstin became close while co-parenting, as they attended sports events and family gatherings together. "She and I became a duo of cheerleaders in the bleachers at Ella's swim meets and basketball games, often to Ella's embarrassment," Harris wrote. "We sometimes joke that our modern family is almost a little too functional."
‘We forged a bond that is unbreakable’: her younger sister, Maya Harris
Kamala Harris grew up with her younger sister Maya, in Berkeley, California. When their parents split up, the two daughters lived with their mother, relocating to Montreal when their mother got a new job at McGill University.
The pair have always been close. “We forged a bond that is unbreakable,” Kamala told The Washington Post of Maya in 2019. “When I think about it, all of the joyous moments in our lives, all of the challenging moments, all of the moments of transition, we have always been together.”
During her senior year of high school, Maya became pregnant with her daughter, Meena. Later, while attending law school, she frequently brought her toddler along to classes and on-campus protests. Maya said to E! News that she was often “juggling work, juggling school, you know, wanting to be the math mom and drive on the field trip.”
Like her sister, Maya also pursued a career in law. After graduating from Bishop O’Dowd High School in San Francisco, she then attended the University of California, Berkeley and Stanford Law School, where she met her husband Tony West.
Maya has supported her sister’s campaigns — first Kamala's 2003 run for San Francisco district attorney and most recently her 2024 bid for the presidency — and also worked as a senior policy advisor for Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign.
As Clinton’s campaign chairman John Podesta told Talking Points Memo: “Hillary really trusted [Maya’s] instincts. Maya would cut through the bulls**t, brief her quickly and give her something to think about.”
"When she is elected president of the United States, I will call her Madam President, until then, she is big sister Kamala," Maya said in an interview with PEOPLE in September 2024.
Her Instagram-savvy niece, Meena Harris
A Stanford-educated lawyer, entrepreneur, and activist, Kamala Harris’s niece Meena is one of a long line of impressively-qualified Harris women. She is perhaps best known for founding Phenomenal, a media and lifestyle brand that champions social justice, and, as of 2022 owns Reductress, the satirical Instagram-based feminist magazine.
Growing up in the Harris family, Meena was raised exclusively by women — her mother Meena, her aunt Kamala, and her grandmother Shyamala.
"I had a 17-year-old single mom," Meena said. "So I got to see her go to law school. I got to see her go through her first law firm job. And same [with] Kamala. I saw so much of my mother and my aunt, and them becoming powerful women in the world starting in their 20s. I had a front-row seat for all of it."
"Everything I do is because of [my family], three awesome and strong women who dedicated themselves to making positive changes in the world," she said in an interview in 2020.
"I have the examples of my mom and aunt, who were public interest lawyers. I was taught the value of everyday activism and showing up by my grandma, who wasn't a public official, but was a breast cancer researcher and would mentor students of colour in her lab at UC Berkley. She taught me when I was 4 years old what the word boycott meant."
Meena graduated from Stanford in 2006, and in 2012, she received her Juris Doctor from Harvard Law School. After graduation, she then clerked on the District of Columbia Court of Appeals. She then went on to become an attorney specialising in data privacy, before working at Slack and Uber.
"My family never coddled me into thinking that my life was going to be rah-rah girl power," Meena said. "It was like, 'You're strong, you're powerful,' and building me up, but also conveying to me the reality.'You're going to have to work twice as hard. Nothing's going to come without a fight. Nothing's going to be handed to you. Nothing's going to be easy.'"
In addition to her company and her legal career, Meena has authoured books aimed at young readers, including Kamala and Maya’s Big Idea, a children’s book inspired by a true story in Kamala and Maya's childhood, when they got their community to turn their empty apartment courtyard into a playground.
